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Boiled Winter Squash
Winter squashes are stewed in the same way as others, but they must remain on the fire a little longer. Cut up the squashes in pieces an inch thick, having first pared the squash; if old, extract the seeds and boil the pieces until they break, mash them with a spoon, boil them a little longer, and when they are done squeeze them through a colander. Mix them with a little salt and a small quantity of butter. If kept in a dry place, winter squashes will remain good all the winter, but if they are once frozen they lose their flavor and are apt to decay. They are richer and firmer than the summer kind.
A plain method for winter squash that is really boil, mash and drain. The whole success of it lies in getting the water out again.
- Which squashAny hard-shelled winter type works: butternut, buttercup, kabocha, Hubbard, acorn. Roughly 3 lb of whole squash yields about 2 lb of peeled flesh, enough for four to six as a side.
- Peeling before cookingParing a raw Hubbard or kabocha is heavy work. Halving the squash, scooping the seeds and cutting it into wedges first gives you something stable to cut the rind from, and a short microwave or a few minutes in boiling water softens the skin enough to make the knife safer.
- Boil until it breaksInch-thick pieces need roughly 15 to 25 minutes in salted water depending on variety. "Until they break" is the right test: the edges should collapse when pressed against the side of the pan.
- The colander step is the pointThe colander step -- Boiled squash carries a great deal of water, and squeezing the mash through a colander or coarse sieve both strains out fibre and expresses some of that liquid. Let the pulp drain over a bowl, or return it to a dry pan over low heat and stir until the excess steams off, or the puree will be loose.
- Seeds and ageThe instruction to remove seeds only 'if old' probably reflects fruit picked young enough that the seed cavity was still soft. Scoop the seeds from anything you buy today; in mature fruit they are woody and the surrounding fibre is unlikely to soften.
- SeasoningSalt and butter to taste; the recipe asks only for 'a small quantity of butter,' so add it sparingly and judge by the pulp. Black pepper, a scrape of nutmeg or a spoonful of cream would not be out of place.
- On the storage noteWhole, uncut winter squash keeps for months at around 50-60F with good air circulation, which is what "a dry place" meant in an unheated pantry. A modern refrigerator is too cold and too damp for whole squash; cooked purée freezes well for several months.
Winter squash is one of the American contributions to the European table, domesticated in the Americas long before contact and adopted early by colonial households, who found it stored through the cold months when little else was available. Nineteenth-century cookbooks commonly separate "summer" squash, boiled young and whole, from "winter" squash, which is left to harden its rind on the vine and then cured; the distinction rests largely on maturity and keeping quality, though summer and winter types are also generally different cultivars and sometimes different species. The storage advice at the end is as much of the entry's value as the cooking method - a frozen Hubbard was a spoiled Hubbard, and a household that lost its squash lost a winter's worth of vegetable.