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Fried Squash

A fried squash dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, cooked in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the squash.

  2. Slice the squash into ½ inch thick pieces.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge in flour.

Fry

  1. In a frying pan, heat half butter and half lard.

  2. Fry the squash until golden brown, cooking slowly with a cover.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Squash
Forms the tender interior that becomes the main body of the dish.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the pan and develop a crisp surface.
Butter
Adds rich flavour and helps the surface turn golden brown in the pan.
Lard
Provides a high-fat frying medium that browns the squash evenly.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly with a cover. Moderate heat with a lid lets the squash cook through and soften before the outside burns. Frying too hot browns the flour coating too quickly, leaving the centre raw.

“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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