Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Fried Squashes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the squash into thin slices.
Sprinkle the slices with salt.
Let the salted slices stand for a few minutes.
Beat the eggs in a bowl.
Fry
Dip the salted squash slices into the beaten eggs.
Fry the coated squash in butter until browned.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Squash
- Forms the main body of the dish and softens as it cooks, becoming tender inside.
- Eggs
- Coat the slices and set when fried, creating a binding layer that browns.
- Butter
- Conducts heat to the coated slices and adds fat that promotes browning and flavor.
The step that matters
Let the salted slices stand for a few minutes. Salt draws moisture out of the squash. Letting it stand lets that water drain, so the slices dry slightly and the egg coating sticks better and fries rather than steaming in the pan.
“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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