Name: Rye Cake
Ingredients: 1½ cups buttermilk; 2 tablespoons molasses; 2 tablespoons Indian meal; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda; rye flour (to thicken)

Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rye Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, combine buttermilk, molasses, Indian meal, salt, and baking soda.
Thicken the mixture with rye flour until desired consistency is reached.

Bake

Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Buttermilk + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + ryetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk: Provides liquid and acidity that react with baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Rye flour: Thickens the mixture and provides the structure that holds the cake together.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the cake.
Indian meal: Adds coarse cornmeal texture and body to the batter.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.