Buttercup squash
Cucurbita maxima · Squash
Top 10 pairings
Buttercup squash is the squat, dark-green, turban-shaped winter squash that gives the whole "buttercup group" of Cucurbita maxima its name — a flattened drum finished at the blossom end with a distinctive raised, pale grey-green button or cup. Beneath the hard rind is its prize: thick, deep-orange flesh that is exceptionally dense, dry and sweet, eating like a cross between a baked sweet potato and a chestnut rather than a watery field pumpkin. Roasted, mashed, baked into pies or simmered into soup, it is a fine keeper, bred for the northern cellar.
Picking a good onedrag
Cured hard, just pickedSoft-spotted, weeping
Shop firmEveryday bestThe all-rounder: roast, soup, pie, curry.
StemHard and dry, cut short
Rind under a nailNail marks it, will not pierce
SkinMatte, one pale ground patch
Smell at the stemFaintly green, clean
These cues are Pumpkin's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
70%
Edible part
952 g flesh · rind, seeds and stem out
1360 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
A whole one wants a cool room, not the fridge. Below 10 C the rind pits. Chill cut wedges.
50–70%
Humidity
Open and airy
Airflow