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Dessert

Squash Pudding

A baked pudding made from stewed squash, eggs, butter, sugar, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Squash Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Stew the squashes until soft, then mash them.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix in the eggs, salt, butter, sugar, and sweet milk, adjusting the milk based on the squash's dryness.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pan.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) until set.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

What each ingredient does

Squash
Forms the bulk of the pudding and supplies moisture and body.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning at the pudding's surface.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness; the amount is adjusted to the squash's dryness.

The step that matters

Adjusting the milk to the squash. Squash varies in water content, so a dry squash needs more milk and a wet one less. Too much liquid stops the eggs from setting firmly, leaving the pudding loose, while too little makes it dense and dry.

“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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