Name: Baked Squash
Ingredients: 1 small squash; ½ cup butter; 1 teaspoon sugar

Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Squash

Ingredients

1 small squash
½ cup butter
1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

Prepare

Slice the squash into 3-inch wide pieces.
Arrange the slices in a baking dish with the rind side down.
Dust with sugar and add pieces of butter on top.

Bake and serve

Bake until tender and done.
Serve in the rind.

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.

Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Squash: Forms the main body of the dish and turns tender and soft as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the squash as it melts over the top.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.

“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.