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Summer Squash

A boiled and mashed summer squash dish seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Summer Squash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the squash

  1. Boil the summer squashes.

  2. Peel the summer squashes.

  3. Slice the summer squashes.

  4. Remove the seeds from the slices.

  5. Cut the slices into squares.

Cook and mash

  1. Place the squares in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  4. Boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Drain the squash carefully.

  6. Mash the squash.

  7. Place the mashed squash in a strainer cloth.

  8. Squeeze the cloth until the squash is dry.

Season and serve

  1. Return the squash to a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of butter.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon of salt.

  4. Add a dash of pepper.

  5. Stir until the squash is very hot.

  6. Serve in a heated vegetable dish.

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 + peppertop 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

Summer squashes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and mashable once boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed squash a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Squeeze the cloth until the squash is dry. Boiled squash holds a lot of water. Squeezing it dry before final seasoning keeps the mash thick rather than watery and lets the butter and salt taste concentrated.

“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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