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Penne with Winter Squash and Pancetta

To freeze, remove the sauce from the heat and let cool completely. Transfer to a 1-quart airtight container and freeze for up to 2 months. Thaw in the refrigerator. When reheating the sauce, stir in an additional 2 Tbs. cream.

By williamssonoma · From Open Recipes · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butternut and kale share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 4 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 4.

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By williamssonoma. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butternut + kaletop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Kale + pastatop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sage + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butternut + pastatop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Olive + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, butternut, kale, chicken, cream, pepper, pasta):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Celerybetter flavor fit
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, butternut, kale, chicken, cream, pepper, pasta. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).