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Squash Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the stewed squash, sugar, and salt.

  2. Melt the butter in the scalded milk and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Add the yeast to the milk mixture and stir.

  4. Gradually add flour until a kneadable dough forms.

Knead and rise

  1. Knead the dough for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the dough rise until light.

  3. Knead again and place in greased tins.

  4. Let rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done.

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. 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Flour
Forms gluten, the stretchy network that gives the bread its structure.
Stewed squash
Adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb.
Scalded milk
Adds moisture and softness, and its proteins help give a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the milk cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is a living organism. Liquid that is still hot can kill it, and then the dough will not rise properly. Lukewarm liquid lets the yeast grow and produce gas.

“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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