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Stuffed Squash

A baked squash filled with bread crumbs, salt pork, parsley, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Squash

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 squash

  1. Pare the squash.

  2. Cut off a slice from the top of the squash.

  3. Extract the seeds from the squash.

  4. Soak the squash in salt water for 1 hour.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the squash with a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped salt pork, and parsley.

  2. Wet the filling with gravy.

  3. Replace the top slice on the squash.

  4. Place the squash in a pudding dish.

  5. Add melted butter and hot water to the bottom of the dish.

  6. Cover the dish tightly.

  7. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours or until tender.

Serve

  1. Transfer the squash to a deep dish.

  2. Pour gravy over the squash before serving.

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the juices and form a soft, moist filling inside the squash.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the filling as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the squash brown and taste rounded.
Small squash
Forms the edible shell that softens and holds the filling during baking.

The step that matters

Bake covered until tender. Baking the squash tightly covered traps steam so the flesh softens evenly. Stopping too early leaves it firm, so test for tenderness before serving.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pork, butter):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pork, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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