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Fried Squash

Thin slices of squash coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the squash thinly and evenly.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and season it with pepper and salt.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each squash slice in the egg mixture, then coat with bread or cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated slices in hot lard 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 tender interior that is the main body of each fried slice.
Egg
Binds the crumbs to the squash so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp coating that browns in the hot lard.

The step that matters

Frying the coated slices in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating soaks up fat and turns greasy instead of crisp and golden. Hot fat sets the crumbs quickly, so the squash cooks through without absorbing much oil.

“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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