Name: Baked Hubbard Squash
Ingredients: Hubbard squash; coarse sea salt; black pepper; ½ teaspoon molasses or brown sugar; 1 teaspoon 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 ↓

Baked Hubbard Squash

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Split the Hubbard squash and cut it into uniform pieces.
Remove the seeds and stringy parts.

Season and bake

Place the pieces in a drip pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Add ½ teaspoon of molasses or brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of butter to each piece.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until tender, covering for the first 30 minutes.
Serve in folded napkins in the shells.

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).
Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,123 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Pepper + molassestop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hubbard squash: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as it bakes.
Molasses or brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the squash surface brown slightly in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the squash moist as it bakes.

“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.