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Creamed Pumpkins

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Pumpkins

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the pumpkins into slices.

  2. Fry the slices in butter until tender.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Serve with a cream sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pumpkin + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pumpkin + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, cream):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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