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Summer Squash
When the skin is tender they are nice for cooking. Cut up and cook in very little water; do not cover, as the evaporation will be more rapid; as they cook down, be very careful that they do not scorch. Stir often; when well cooked, season with salt, pepper and butter, also little cream, if desired.
A stewed-down squash rather than a boiled one, and the method is sounder than it looks: leaving the pan uncovered drives off the water summer squash gives up, so the flesh concentrates instead of turning to soup.
- The hinge: uncovered, low, and stirredSquash is around 95 percent water, and covering the pan traps every drop of it. Keep the lid off and the heat moderate so the liquid leaves as fast as it appears; once it has gone the pulp catches quickly, which is why the original insists on frequent stirring.
- "Very little water"A few tablespoons in the bottom of a heavy pan is enough — it exists only to keep things from sticking before the squash releases its own juice. A wide sauté pan works better than a deep saucepan because it gives more surface for evaporation.
- Which squashIn this period this would have meant the pattypan and crookneck types picked young. Zucchini and yellow straightneck behave the same way. The tender-skin test still holds: if your thumbnail marks the skin easily, no peeling is needed and no seeds need scooping.
- TimingCut into rough half-inch pieces, expect 15 to 25 minutes to cook down to a soft, spoonable mass. The recipe wants "well cooked" — a collapsed purée-like texture, not the crisp-tender squash of modern habit.
- Season at the endThe original seasons only once the squash is well cooked; salt added early draws more water out of the flesh, which can slow the reduction. Butter, salt and pepper go in at the end, and the cream, if used, wants only a moment's warming.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, two pounds of squash cooks down to about four modest side servings. Buy more than looks necessary.
Summer squash is one of the New World foods that never needed introducing to American cooks — the Cucurbita pepo group was cultivated across the Americas long before European contact, and the word squash itself comes from a Narragansett term generally given as askutasquash. Turn-of-the-century vegetable chapters treat it almost as an afterthought, because it was a garden crop that arrived in glut every July and had to be dealt with rather than sought out. The instruction to cook it down hard, uncovered, reflects a period preference for vegetables reduced to softness and enriched with butter and cream.