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Bread

Squash Bread

A yeast bread made with stewed squash, sugar, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the sugar, salt, and squash in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter and hot milk, stirring until combined.

  3. Once cool, add the yeast cake dissolved in ½ cup warm water.

  4. Gradually add flour until a dough forms.

Knead and rise

  1. Knead the dough for 20 minutes.

  2. Let the dough rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into loaves, let rise again, and then bake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Stewed squash
Adds moisture and body, giving the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms gluten when kneaded, which gives the dough structure and chew.
Yeast cake
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, helping the crumb stay soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only once the milk mixture has cooled. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to scalded, still-hot milk can stop the dough from rising. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the yeast alive.

“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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