Name: Mashed Squash
Ingredients: 1 medium squash; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Pepper and butter 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 ↓

Mashed Squash

Ingredients

1 medium squash
coarse sea salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

Prepare

Peel the squash and cut it into scallops.
Place the squash in a saucepan and cover with water.
Add a little coarse sea salt and cover the pan.
Bring to a boil over high heat.

Mash and finish

Once cooked, drain the squash and rub it through a colander.
Return the squash to the saucepan, season with salt and pepper, and add butter. Mix well and heat thoroughly.

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.

Pepper + buttertop 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

Squash: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and smooth when cooked and pressed.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed squash a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

“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.