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Winter Squash

A simple mashed winter squash dish seasoned with pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Winter Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the squash, remove the strings and seeds, and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a stewpan and cover with hot water.

Cook and mash

  1. Simmer gently until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain in a colander and mash until smooth.

  3. Season the mash with pepper and coarse sea salt, and mix in the butter.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish, dot with pepper, garnish with parsley, and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 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

Yellow squash
Forms the mash itself, giving the dish its body and sweet, mild flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the mash smoother and more flavourful.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Boiling hard can break the squash pieces apart and make the water-logged mash watery. A gentle simmer cooks them evenly through, so they mash smoothly once drained.

“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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