Name: To Bake Squash
Ingredients: 1 winter squash; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; Butter

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 ↓

To Bake Squash

Ingredients

1 winter squash
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Butter

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Cut the winter squash in half and scrape out the seeds.

Bake and serve

Place the squash rind side up on a round pie tin and bake at 350°F (175°C) until tender.
Once baked, scrape the flesh out of the rind and mash it.
Season the mashed squash with salt, pepper, and butter.

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.

Winter squash + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the mashed squash, improving flavor and mouthfeel.