Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Rye Bread
Ingredients
Directions
In a bowl, combine yeast, warm water, rye flour, wheat flour, lard or butter, and brown sugar. Beat together and let rise overnight.
In the morning, mix in warm milk and Indian meal, adding enough rye flour to form a dough.
Knead the dough, cover it, and set it in a warm place to rise for 2 to 3 hours.
Knead again and shape into loaves.
If the dough shows any sourness, add 1 teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in warm water.
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 + wheattop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together404 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,320 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
More rye bread recipes
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