Home › Dessert › Hubbard Squash Pie
Hubbard Squash Pie
One pint steamed and strained squash, one quart milk, three eggs, one teaspoon vanilla, one-half teaspoon ginger, a little salt; sweeten to taste with syrup and sugar. Line pie plates with a rich crust, pour mixture in and bake slowly.
A New England squash custard, written for a cook who already knew what a set custard looks like. The proportions make a great deal of filling, and the one thing worth getting right is the oven.
- "Bake slowly" means 325F"Bake slowly" -- no temperature is given, and a moderate modern oven of about 325F is the closest equivalent. This is a custard in a crust, not a pastry to be browned. If you want the shell set first, start hotter for the first 10-15 minutes and then drop to 325F for the remainder. Too hot an oven will curdle the eggs and weep liquid into the crust.
- YieldA pint of squash plus a quart of milk and three eggs makes enough filling for roughly three 9-inch pies, which fits the original's plural "pie plates." To scale to one pie, take a third: about 2/3 cup squash, 1 1/3 cups milk, 1 egg.
- The custard is loose by modern standardsThree eggs to a quart of milk is a thin set even with the squash helping. If you want a slice that stands up, use four or five eggs per quart, or reduce the milk to a pint and a half.
- Hubbard squashA hard, blue-grey or orange winter squash, still sold in the fall but often in cut pieces because a whole one can run 15 lb. Kabocha or butternut behaves the same way; canned pumpkin is drier and denser and will need extra milk.
- "Steamed and strained"Hubbard is stringy and wet. Steam until soft, then press through a sieve or food mill rather than mashing, and let it drain in the sieve for a few minutes so the pie is not watery.
- Syrup and sugarIn this period "syrup" on a New England table usually meant molasses, cane syrup or maple. Figure about 3/4 cup of sweetener per pie in total; molasses will darken and deepen the flavor, maple keeps it lighter.
- Judging donenessBake until the edge is set and the center still trembles slightly, about 45-55 minutes at 325F for a 9-inch pie. An instant-read thermometer in the center should show 170-175F; carryover heat finishes it as it cools.
- Cool completelySquash custard slices cleanly only when fully cold. Cutting it warm gives you a puddle regardless of how well it baked.
Squash pie has a long history in New England kitchens, and for a long time squash and pumpkin were used almost interchangeably in print; winter squash keeps better in a cellar than field pumpkin and cooks to a smoother, less watery pulp. The Hubbard itself is a nineteenth-century Massachusetts variety, traditionally said to have been named by the Marblehead seedsman James J. H. Gregory after a neighbor, Elizabeth Hubbard, who passed the seed along to him. A large keeping squash structured autumn and winter cooking: one fruit could yield soup, a side dish and several pies, and a quantity of filling this size suggests a household baking more than one pie at a time.