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Stuffed Squash

Squash stuffed with beef and rice, cooked with bacon and tomatoes until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stuffed Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Fry the onion in butter until light yellow.

  2. Add the hot beef and rice to the onion and season to taste.

Stuff and cook

  1. Peel the yellow squash, cut off the top, and remove the seeds.

  2. Fill the squash with the beef and rice mixture.

  3. Place the stuffed squash in a pan with strips of bacon and tomatoes.

  4. Cook until the squash is tender.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 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

Raw chopped beef
Provides the savoury meat filling that fills the squash.
Boiled rice
Bulks out the filling and absorbs juices as it cooks.
Yellow squash
Acts as the edible shell that holds the filling while it cooks until tender.
Butter
Fat that softens and lightly browns the onion, adding richness.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan, adding savoury flavour and moisture to the squash.

The step that matters

Cook until the squash is tender. Raw beef in the filling needs enough time to cook through, and the squash must soften so it can be cut and eaten. Check that the squash gives easily under a fork and that the filling is no longer pink before serving.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, onion, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, onion, 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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