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Dessert

Squash Pie

A pie made from stewed squash mixed with flour and milk, seasoned with salt and sweetened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Squash Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the squash thoroughly until it is quite dry.

  2. Rub the squash through a colander.

  3. In a bowl, mix the squash with the flour.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the mixture.

  5. Add a pinch of salt and sweeten to taste.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the bulk and body of the filling once dried and pureed.
White flour
Thickens the squash and milk mixture as it cooks, giving the filling a set texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the squash into a smooth custard-like filling.

The step that matters

Stewing the squash until quite dry. Excess water in the squash dilutes the filling and keeps it from thickening properly, so the squash should be cooked down until dry before mixing.

“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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