Squash Pie
1 cup squash steamed and 4 tablespoons brandy or strained. 1 cup cream or rich milk. 1 cup sugar. 3 eggs slightly beaten.
Salt.
Sherry. 1 teaspoon cinnamon. 1¼ teaspoons nutmeg. 1 teaspoon ginger.
PROCESS: Mix the ingredients in the order given, stir until ingredients are well blended. Line a deep, perforated pie pan with Rich Paste; brush over with slightly beaten white of egg. Turn in squash mixture and bake in a moderate oven. Serve cold with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with mace.
The ingredient list has come through with its lines scrambled: read it as 1 cup steamed and strained squash, 4 tablespoons brandy or sherry, 1 cup cream, 1 cup sugar, 3 eggs, salt and the spices. It is a custard pie, and everything that matters follows from that.
- Doneness, not timeThe original gives no time because the cook was expected to watch it. A 9-inch pie needs roughly 45 to 55 minutes; pull it when the outer inch is set and the center still wobbles as a single mass. It finishes firming as it cools, and an overbaked squash custard weeps and cracks.
- "A moderate oven"Around 350 to 375F. Some modern custard pie recipes start hotter, about 425F for the first 12 to 15 minutes, to set the pastry before dropping to 350F for the rest; the recipe itself asks only for a moderate oven throughout.
- The squashOne cup steamed and strained means dry, smooth puree, not watery mash. Butternut, buttercup or Hubbard, steamed and then pressed through a sieve or drained in a cloth. Canned pumpkin puree substitutes directly. If the puree is loose the custard will not set cleanly.
- Perforated pie panA tin with a punched bottom, used to vent steam and crisp the crust. A modern equivalent is a metal pan on a preheated baking sheet, or a blind-baked shell.
- The egg-white washThis is the small step that does real work. Brushing the raw pastry with beaten white and letting it dry a minute seals the surface against the wet filling.
- Brandy or sherryFour tablespoons in a single pie is assertive by current taste; two is plenty if you want the squash and spice forward. The alcohol largely bakes off.
- Rich PasteHiller's own short crust, given elsewhere in the book. Any all-butter single-crust pastry works, but keep it on the sturdy side for a deep pan.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe gives neither pan size nor yield; the quantities suit roughly one deep 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Served cold, as directed, with whipped cream flavored with a little ground mace, which is warmer and slightly more floral than nutmeg.
Squash and pumpkin were long treated as interchangeable in New England: winter squashes keep better and cook down drier and sweeter than field pumpkins, so nineteenth-century cookbooks often print the two as interchangeable or give squash first. The heavy hand with brandy or sherry and the mace-scented whipped cream mark this as a company version rather than a farmhouse one, in keeping with the book's premise of a planned Sunday dinner for each week of the year.