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Squash Pie (Economical)
Bake the half of a Hubbard squash, scoop out the pulp, rub through a strainer. (There should be one and one-half cups.) Add one cup hot milk, one-half cup sugar, one-half teaspoon salt, onehalf teaspoon ginger, one-fourth teaspoon nutmeg and one egg well beaten. Mix well. Line a pie pan with Plain Paste, put an extra rim of pastry around edge of pie, flute rim and turn in mixture. Bake thirty minutes in a moderately hot oven.
A thin, lightly spiced custard pie stretched with a single egg, which is where the "economical" comes in. The squash does most of the setting work, so its moisture content matters more than anything else here.
- Drain the squashA baked Hubbard half can be watery, and a wet purée gives a pie that weeps or never sets. After straining, let the pulp sit in a sieve or press it in a towel until you have a stiff purée, then measure the 1½ cups.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" in this period is about 400F. Thirty minutes at that heat suits a shallow pie in a thin metal pan; in a modern glass or ceramic dish expect 40 to 45 minutes. Bake on a preheated sheet on a low rack so the bottom crust sets.
- DonenessThe centre should still wobble slightly when the pie comes out; it firms as it cools. If you use a thermometer, 170 to 175F in the middle is the point to stop. Carried to a clean-knife test all the way through, the custard curdles and beads.
- One egg is not a typoMany squash and pumpkin pie recipes of the era call for two or three eggs to a pint of liquid. With one, the filling is soft and sliceable rather than firm. If you want a sturdier slice, that is a different recipe.
- Hubbard squashA large blue-grey or green winter squash, still sold in autumn markets but rarely in February. Kabocha or butternut substitute directly; both are usually sweeter than Hubbard, and kabocha is drier while butternut can run wetter, so drain accordingly and taste before adding all the sugar.
- Hot milkWarming the milk before it meets the beaten egg is deliberate — it dissolves the sugar and shortens the bake. Add it to the squash first, then the egg, so the egg is never poured into anything near scalding on its own.
- Plain Paste and the raised rimPlain Paste is the book's basic short crust. The "extra rim of pastry" is a second strip of dough laid on the edge and fluted; it raises the wall so a shallow pan holds the full filling without spilling.
- YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pie (the recipe specifies only "a pie pan"), six modest wedges. Best eaten the day it is baked; the crust softens overnight in the refrigerator.
Squash pie is the older New England habit, and pumpkin pie the one that eventually took the name in popular use — colonial and nineteenth-century cooks used the two words almost interchangeably. The Hubbard itself is a Massachusetts variety, generally traced to Marblehead and popularised by the seedsman James J. H. Gregory in the mid-1800s; the traditional account is that he named it for a neighbour, Elizabeth Hubbard, who had passed the seed along. Its very thick shell meant a single squash kept in a cold cellar through the winter, which makes it a late-winter rather than an October ingredient. The "economical" label points the same direction: one egg, half a cup of sugar, no cream, a pie built out of what was still in the cellar at the end of a long winter.