Name: Baked Squash
Ingredients: 1 fine Hubbard squash; 1 tablespoon butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Squash

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

1 fine Hubbard squash
1 tablespoon butter
salt to taste
pepper to taste

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

Cut a slice four inches thick from the squash and remove the seeds.
Place the squash slice in a baking dish and cover it closely.

Bake and serve

Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for one hour or until soft.
Scrape the squash from the rind and mash it.
Season with butter, salt, and pepper.
Transfer to a vegetable dish and keep hot in the oven until serving.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hubbard squash: Provides the main body of the dish, becoming soft and mashable when baked.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, making the mashed squash smoother and more flavorful.

“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.