Name: Hominy Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked hominy; 1 tablespoon salt; 2 tablespoons hominy grits; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 tablespoon fat; 2 medium-sized potatoes; 1 yeast cake, softened; 1¼ cups lukewarm water; Wheat flour, as needed

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hominy Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Put the cooked hominy through a potato ricer.
Add enough lukewarm water to the hominy and mashed potatoes to fill a quart measure.
Mix in the softened yeast cake, salt, sugar, and fat.
Add enough wheat flour to create a sponge.
Let the sponge rise, then add more flour to knead.
Knead for 10 to 15 minutes, then let rise again.
Knead once more and shape into loaves.
This recipe makes 3 loaves of bread.

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.

Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + wheattop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,071 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).