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Boiled Squash

A simple boiled squash dish seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Boiled Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Cook and mash

  1. Boil in salted water until tender, about 20 minutes for young squash.

  2. Drain well and press through a vegetable press back into the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix with salt, pepper, and a roux made from butter and flour.

  2. Stir and beat for 1 minute until creamy and hot, then 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 bulk of the dish and, once cooked and pressed, gives it a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the squash and helps it hold a creamy body.

The step that matters

Stir and beat after adding the roux. Flour needs heat and stirring to cook out and thicken evenly with the butter. Stirring while hot keeps the roux blended into the squash so it becomes creamy rather than lumpy or pasty.

“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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