Name: Bailed Winter Squash
Ingredients: 1 winter squash; butter

Why it works: Winter squash and butter work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 95 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bailed Winter Squash

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

1 winter squash
butter

Directions

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

Prepare

Cut open the squash and remove the seeds.
Cut the squash into large pieces without separating them.
Place the pieces on a baking sheet.

Bake and serve

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.
Once done, peel and mash like mashed potatoes, or serve the pieces hot with butter.

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.

Winter squash + buttertop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together95 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

Winter squash: Forms the main body of the dish and softens into a tender, mashable flesh when baked.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the hot squash when served.

“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.