Name: Baked Squash, No. 1
Ingredients: squash; coarse sea salt; sugar; butter

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Squash, No. 1

Ingredients

squash
coarse sea salt
sugar
butter

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

Cut the squash into slices about ½ inch thick.
Pare the slices.
Sprinkle the slices with a little coarse sea salt and sugar.
Place tiny bits of butter over the slices.

Bake and serve

Bake in a pan at 350°F (175°C) until tender.
Serve in a vegetable dish.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Squash: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender and soft as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the slices as they bake and adding flavour.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.

“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.