Squash Pie
1 cup dry mashed squash 2 cups hot milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon fine cracker crumbs 1/3 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon, or less, of almond flavoring A few grains salt Heat the milk. Mix the cracker crumbs, sugar, and salt, and stir them into the squash. Stir in the beaten egg and the flavoring, and mix thoroughly, then stir in the hot milk. Stir well together. Pour into a crust which has a built-up edge, and bake in a moderate oven till set. Instead of the vanilla and almond flavoring, one-fourth cup of shredded cocoanut may be used. Grind the cocoanut fine by running it through a food chopper, then brown it very lightly in the oven, or it may be used without browning.
A single-crust custard pie with an unusually loose filling and no spice at all. Two things need attention: the ratio of liquid to egg, and the oven.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F. Some cooks start a custard pie at 425F for the first 10 minutes to set the bottom crust, then drop to 350F for the rest.
- One egg is not muchTwo cups of milk plus a cup of squash set with a single egg gives a very soft, almost spoonable filling. It will slice better with two or three eggs, and the cracker crumbs may be there partly to compensate for the thin custard.
- Dry mashed squashThe word dry matters. Steam or bake the squash rather than boiling it, and drain and cook off the moisture in a pan until the mash holds its shape. Canned pumpkin or squash puree works and is already dry enough. Wet squash gives a weeping pie.
- Adding the hot milkPour the hot milk into the squash mixture in a slow stream while stirring, so the beaten egg is warmed gradually rather than scrambled.
- Crust with a built-up edgeThe recipe gives no pan size; the volume suits a 9-inch shell, and a high fluted rim helps since the filling comes nearly to the top. Chilling the shell well, or blind baking it, keeps the bottom from going soggy under so much liquid.
- Telling when it is setRoughly 40 to 50 minutes. The edges should be firm and the center still trembling slightly when the pan is nudged; it finishes setting as it cools. A knife inserted an inch from the center comes out clean.
- Almond flavoringA quarter teaspoon of almond extract in a whole pie is assertive. Modern extracts are strong, so start with less than called for.
- CocoanutUnsweetened shredded coconut is the likelier reading of the original; sweetened flake will make the pie cloying. A food processor does the grinding, and a few minutes in a low oven, watched closely, is enough to toast it.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Best eaten the day it is baked, refrigerated after cooling.
Squash and pumpkin pie names were used almost interchangeably in American cookbooks through much of the nineteenth century; winter squash gave a drier, less stringy puree and was often preferred. What marks this version is what is missing. There is no cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg or molasses, the standard flavorings of a New England squash pie, and vanilla, almond or toasted coconut stand in their place. That omission would be at home in the health-reform kitchens of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which held that pungent spices and condiments irritated the digestion and overstimulated the appetite, though nothing here establishes the source of this particular recipe. The cracker crumbs act as a thrifty binder, doing the work that a second or third egg would do.