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Summer Squash, Steamed

Steamed summer squash seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, Steamed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the squash is not very tender, peel it thinly, removing mostly the outer rind.

  2. Slice the squash and remove the seeds if they are large; leave them if they are small.

Steam and dry

  1. Place the squash in a steamer over boiling water and steam for 30 to 40 minutes until tender.

  2. Remove from the steamer and drain any excess water.

  3. Mash the squash in a stew pan and add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Set the stew pan on low heat for 15 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally to dry it out.

  5. Reheat and serve.

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 squash
Provides the main body and mild flavour of the dish once steamed and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed squash a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drying the mashed squash on low heat. Steamed squash holds a lot of water. Stirring it over low heat, uncovered, lets that moisture evaporate so the mash becomes thick rather than watery and dilute in flavour.

“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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