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Baked Winter Squash

A baked winter squash dish seasoned with butter, salt, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter squash and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Winter Squash

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the squash into quarters and remove the seeds and stringy portions.

Bake

  1. Place the squash in a dripping pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) for two hours or until soft.

Finish

  1. Remove the squash from the shell and mash it.

  2. Season the mashed squash with butter, coarse sea salt, sugar, and pepper to taste.

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. Winter squash + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Winter squash + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Winter squash + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Winter squash
Provides the main body, sweetness and soft texture once baked and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mashed squash, smoothing its texture and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that complements the squash's natural sugars.

The step that matters

Bake until fully soft. Squash must be baked until the flesh is tender all the way through. Underbaked squash stays firm and starchy, so it will not mash smoothly or taste as sweet.

Swap the winter squash

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Winter squashthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper. 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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