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Fried Squash, Boston Style

Fried squash, Boston style, is a dish of sliced squash fried in lard after boiling and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Squash, Boston Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the squash and cut into ½‑inch thick scallops.

  2. Boil the squash in water for 3 minutes, then drain.

  3. Place the squash in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, and let sit for 1 hour, tossing occasionally.

  4. Dry the squash on a napkin.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the squash in flour.

  2. Fry in hot lard.

  3. Serve on a napkin.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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; boiling and salting soften it and draw out excess moisture.
Flour
Coats the squash so it browns and forms a crisp outer crust when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that helps the coating crisp and brown.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the squash and draws out moisture as it sits.

The step that matters

Dry the squash before frying. Surface water turns to steam in hot lard and can make the flour coating soggy or cause spattering. Drying the squash well lets the coating brown and crisp.

“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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