Name: Winter Squash
Ingredients: 1 medium winter squash; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Winter squash and pepper work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 100 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Squash

Ingredients

1 medium winter squash
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Directions

Prepare

Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds and fiber.
Cut the squash into pieces and peel off the rind.

Steam and finish

Place the pieces in a steamer and steam for 2 hours.
Mash the squash or run it through a vegetable sifter.
Mix in the butter, salt, and pepper.
Serve very hot.

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 + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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, becoming soft and tender as it steams.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the mashed squash a smooth, silky texture.