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Eggless Squash Pies
One pint squash steamed and strained, one quart milk, one and one-half tablespoons corn starch, one-half teaspoon ginger, one teaspoon cinnamon, one-half teaspoon vanilla; sweeten to taste with sugar and syrup, a little salt. Boil the milk, then stir the corn starch with a little cold milk, and pour on the boiling milk, boil it up once, take it from the fire and add the other ingredients, line pie plates with rich crust, pour mixture in and bake slowly.
A custard pie thickened with cornstarch rather than eggs, which changes both the method and the texture. The order of operations is the whole recipe: the starch is cooked into the milk on the stove, and everything else goes in off the heat.
- The hinge: cook the starch, then stopBoil the milk, slurry the cornstarch in a little cold milk, pour the boiling milk on and let it come up to a boil once, as the recipe directs. Long or hard boiling can weaken starch's thickening power, so there is nothing to gain by going further; the vanilla and spices are added after the pan leaves the fire, as the recipe specifies.
- A pint of squashThat is 2 cups of cooked, well-drained puree, roughly a 2 to 2 1/2 lb winter squash such as butternut, kabocha or Hubbard. "Steamed and strained" matters: press it through a sieve and let it drain, because watery squash gives a weeping pie.
- "Sweeten to taste with sugar and syrup"No quantity is given, and the original genuinely leaves it open. For 2 cups squash and a quart of milk, something in the region of 3/4 to 1 cup total sweetener is a reasonable starting point. "Syrup" in a nineteenth-century American kitchen would most often mean molasses, cane syrup or sorghum, which supplies the dark note eggless fillings otherwise lack.
- Bake slowlyA slow oven is conventionally reckoned at about 300 to 325F. Too hot an oven risks the milk separating and the surface cracking. Expect roughly 45 to 60 minutes; the filling should be set at the rim with a slight wobble in the middle, then firm fully as it cools.
- YieldA quart of milk plus a pint of squash is a large amount of filling, and the recipe says "pie plates", plural: reckon on two to three 9-inch pies, or one deep pie plus a small dish of the surplus baked on its own.
- Bottom crustA loose, hot filling poured into raw pastry will soak in. Partially blind-bake the shells and let the cooked mixture cool to warm rather than hot before filling.
- Set is softer than an egg custardCornstarch gives a more yielding filling, and at only one and a half tablespoons to a quart of milk this one will be soft. Chill it thoroughly before cutting and do not expect clean wedges from a warm pie.
Squash pie and pumpkin pie were, for most of the nineteenth century, names used almost interchangeably in New England kitchens, cooks reaching for whatever hard-shelled squash the cellar held. What marks this version is the missing egg. Eggless formulas turn up throughout late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century household books for several overlapping reasons: eggs were seasonal and expensive in winter, exactly when squash was plentiful, and cornstarch had become a cheap and reliable pantry thickener. The substitution of a boiled starch custard for eggs is the same technique behind blancmange and cornstarch pudding, here simply poured into a crust, and it produces a lighter, more pudding-like pie than the egg-set version most readers will know.