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Dessert

Squash Breakfast Cake

A sweet cake made with squash, egg, sugar, butter, yeast, flour, baking soda, and water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Squash Breakfast Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine squash, egg, sugar, butter, yeast, and enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Cover and let rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, dissolve baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  2. Mold the dough and cut it into biscuit shapes.

  3. Let the biscuits rise again.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the dough.
Egg
Binds the mixture and gives it structure as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and gives richness.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, which leavens the dough.
Baking soda
Helps lighten the dough as it reacts during mixing.

The step that matters

Overnight rise. Yeast needs time to produce gas and develop flavor. If the dough rises too little, the biscuits will be dense; the second rise after shaping also lets the dough expand before baking.

“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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