The Myth of Brown Butter Sauce

Butternut squash is Mother Nature’s gift to us as we slog through the dead of winter. Without even a drop of cream, it makes a velvety soup and its flavors are fully realized with just a hint of ginger or nutmeg.

It seems natural then, that butternut squash would make a terrific ravioli. Encase a dollop of butternut squash mash in a pillow of pasta — what could be better? But somewhere along the line, brown butter sauce got hitched to butternut squash’s star. Try Googling “sauce butternut squash ravioli” and you’ll be hard pressed to find a non-brown butter suggestion. There’s a lemon cream suggestion, but that just seemed off.

It’s like a bad date. It looks beautiful — glistening with butter, spreckled with the brown flecks of the toasted butter solids — but there’s just nothing there — even with sage fried in the butter and with dried cranberries and walnuts rounding out the sauce.

So what do you do? Default to red sauce? Nah, it’d overpower the squash. Cream sauce? Eh. A savory cranberry/wine reduction? Still seems too strong. Any suggestions?