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Fried Gourds

Fried gourds are quartered, stewed, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Gourds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gourds

  1. Cut the gourds into quarters and remove the skin and pulp.

  2. Stew the gourds until tender, then drain them completely.

Coat the gourds

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl and dip the drained gourds into it.

  2. Coat the gourds with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard in a pan until hot.

  2. Fry the coated gourds until they are a nice light color.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper before serving.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Gourds
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed and crisp outside when fried.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs stick to the gourds.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that helps the coating brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Drain the gourds completely before coating. Excess water on the stewed gourds dilutes the beaten egg and makes the bread crumbs slide off or turn soggy, and it can splatter in hot lard. Thorough draining helps the coating adhere and fry crisp.

“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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