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Winter Squash
The best kind of winter squash is the small marrow squash. Pare them, cut them in pieces of nice size, put in a stewpan, and stew over a slow fire with just a little water; mash the squash in the pan very smooth; add butter and salt to it.
A plain steam-and-mash method that works as well now as it did then, provided you keep the water down and the heat low. The whole success of the dish is in how little liquid you use.
- The hinge: barely any water"just a little water" means a shallow film in the bottom of the pan, covered if you can, so the squash steams rather than boils. Winter squash is roughly 85 to 90 percent water already; drown it and you get soup that no amount of butter will rescue.
- Marrow squashThe "small marrow" is the Boston marrow or an autumnal marrow, an orange-fleshed heirloom rarely sold today. Butternut is the closest supermarket match for sweetness and dry flesh; a small hubbard or kabocha also works.
- Stewpan and slow fireA stewpan is a straight-sided saucepan with a lid; any heavy-bottomed pan will do. "Slow fire" is low heat, and with this little water you need to check every few minutes so the bottom does not catch.
- TimingPeeled two-inch pieces are tender in 15 to 25 minutes depending on the variety. Test with a knife tip rather than the clock, since winter squashes differ enormously in density.
- Drying the mashOnce mashed, keep the pan over low heat and stir a minute or two to drive off steam. Some period recipes direct pressing the cooked squash through a sieve or colander to catch strings; a food mill or ricer does the same job and gives the "very smooth" texture called for.
- Butter and saltNo amounts are given. Roughly 2 tablespoons butter and a half teaspoon salt per pound of prepared squash is in keeping with the period; a grind of pepper is a reasonable modern addition.
- YieldA 2 lb squash yields about 1 1/2 lb of flesh, enough for four as a side dish.
- PeelingParing raw winter squash is the hard part. Halve and seed it first so it sits flat, then work down the curve with a sturdy knife rather than a vegetable peeler.
Winter squashes are American natives, domesticated in the Americas and long grown across the eastern woodlands before European settlement, and household cookbooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries treat them as an everyday keeping vegetable rather than a novelty. Named varieties mattered in a way they no longer do at the supermarket: seed catalogues of the period listed the Boston marrow, the autumnal marrow, the hubbard and the crookneck, and cooks had firm opinions about which mashed best, which is why this entry opens by naming a kind before it gives a single instruction. The appeal of a winter squash in a book like this one is storage "" a hard-shelled squash laid in a cool cellar in October could be eaten in February, when little else green or orange was to be had. The finished dish, mashed smooth with butter and salt, is essentially the same preparation that still turns up beside a roast, and the same one that, sweetened and put in pastry, becomes squash or pumpkin pie.