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Squash Griddle Cakes

A griddle cake made with squash, milk, flour, and baking powder, cooked until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Squash Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Pour the boiling milk into the squash.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg.

  4. Mix in the baking powder with the flour.

Cook

  1. Fry the mixture until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the griddle cakes their structure.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Squash
Adds moisture and a tender texture to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the egg. Adding the egg to a very hot mixture can cook it in lumps, leaving the batter uneven and weakening its ability to bind and rise.

“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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