Why it works: Rye and butter work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 348 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓
Bte and Indian Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Combine the Indian meal and salt in a glazed earthen pan.
Pour the boiling water over the mixture and stir until fully wet.
When the mixture is milk-warm, add the rye meal, yeast, and warm water as needed.
Knead the dough with your hands until it is stiff but not firm.
Shape and rise
Grease a large, deep pan with butter.
Place the dough inside the pan, smoothing the top with wet hands.
Let the dough rise in a warm place until it begins to crack on top, about 1 to 1.5 hours.
Bake
Preheat the oven.
Bake the bread for 3 to 4 hours, or leave it in the oven overnight for better results.
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.
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Rye + buttertop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together348 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Indian meal
- Forms the main structure and body of the loaf as it cooks.
- Rye meal
- Adds flavor and helps the crumb hold moisture.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise and open up.
- Boiling water
- Partly cooks the cornmeal starch so the dough becomes soft and pliable.
The step that matters
Letting the dough rise until it cracks. Rising in a warm place lets yeast produce gas that expands the dough. Stopping when the top just begins to crack keeps the loaf light without over-expanding and collapsing.
“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.
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