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Cymlings or Summer Squash
These are better when young and tender, which may be known by pressing the nail through the skin; do not peel or take out seeds, but boil whole, or cut across in thick slices; boil in as little water as possible for one-half or three-quarters of an hour, drain well, mash and set on back part of stove or range to dry out for ten or fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally; then season with butter, pepper, salt and a little cream. If old, peel, cut up, take out seeds, boil and season as above.
A straightforward boiled-and-mashed summer squash, and the whole success of it lies in the drying step rather than the boiling.
- What a cymling isCymling (also cymbling or simnel squash) is the flat, scalloped white or pale green squash sold today as pattypan. Any tender summer squash — yellow crookneck, zucchini — behaves the same way in this recipe.
- Cut the boiling timeHalf to three-quarters of an hour is far longer than young squash needs. Young pattypan cut in thick slices is usually tender in 10 to 15 minutes; test with a knife tip rather than the clock.
- The hinge: drying outSummer squash is mostly water, and mashed squash without this step is soup. "Back part of the stove" means the cooler end of a wood range — use the lowest burner setting or a very low oven, and stir often so the bottom does not scorch as the steam leaves.
- Boil in as little water as possibleBetter still, steam it in a covered pan with a splash of water, or salt the sliced squash for 20 minutes and press it before cooking. Less water in means less to drive off later.
- The nail testPressing a thumbnail through the skin is still a common check for immaturity. If the skin resists, the squash is old: peel it, scoop the seeds, and expect a coarser texture.
- Seasoning"A little cream" is probably a tablespoon or two of heavy cream for a pound or so of squash — enough to loosen the mash, not to make a sauce. Grated nutmeg or a scrape of onion is a plausible addition, though the recipe calls for neither.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, two pounds of untrimmed squash makes about three modest side servings once the water is driven off.
"Cymling" is one of the oldest American names for the scalloped summer squash, recorded chiefly in Southern and South Midland usage, and it is the heading under which Buckeye Cookery (1877) files the vegetable rather than as pattypan. The word is generally traced to simnel, the flat English cake, on the strength of the squash's shape. Scallop squashes are indigenous American cultivars, grown by Native farmers long before European settlement and taken up early by colonial kitchens; seed catalogues of the nineteenth century list them as "Early White Bush Scallop." The instruction to mash and then dry the pulp on the cooler end of the range is a nice piece of wood-stove logic — a range gave a cook a continuous gradient of heat to work along, and holding a pan somewhere lukewarm for a quarter of an hour cost nothing at all.