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Some Kitchen Kinks: Squash
Squash. The various varieties of the summer squash are generally cooked when so small and tender that the thumb nail can pierce the rind easily.
To prepare for the table wash the squash, cut into small pieces, and either cook in boiling water or steam it. It will cook in boiling water in half an hour. It takes about an hour to cook it in the steamer. The cooked squash is mashed fine and seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter. This method gives a delicate flavored but rather watery dish.
Summer squash is very palatable cut in slices and fried like eggplant.
It is claimed by many that the very young summer squashes, particularly the turban variety, or "cymlin" of the Southern States, are very delicate and palatable cooked whole. For this dish they should not be much larger than a silver dollar. In the opinion of the writer the crook-necked and other summer squashes are richer in flavor when grown to a large size.
From the more mature squash remove the thin skin and seeds. Cut the squash in small pieces and put in a stewpan with boiling water enough to cover. Boil for half an hour. Drain, mash, and season with salt, pepper, and butter.
Cook winter squash in the same manner. Squash is one of the vegetables that require a good deal of butter.
A survey of squash cookery from the era before anyone worried about waterlogged vegetables. The technique is sound; the timings are not.
- Cut the boiling time hardHalf an hour of boiling reduces tender summer squash to grey mush. Sliced summer squash is done in 5 to 8 minutes in boiling water, or 8 to 10 in a steamer. Mature winter squash is the only kind that genuinely wants 20 to 30 minutes.
- Fixing the waterinessIf you do want a mash, drain the cooked squash in a colander and press it, then return it to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to drive off steam before adding butter. Salting the raw cut pieces for 20 minutes and blotting them works even better.
- "Cymlin"Also spelled cymling or simlin, the Southern name for the flat scalloped pattypan squash. Still sold under that name in parts of the South; supermarkets label it pattypan or scallop squash.
- Turban and crookneck"Turban variety" here means the small scalloped summer squash, not the large hard-shelled winter turban squash sold today. Crookneck is the curved yellow summer squash, and the writer's preference for large ones runs against the usual advice: past about eight inches the seeds coarsen and the flesh turns spongy.
- Frying like eggplantThe comparison implies the eggplant method of the period: salt, drain, dredge in flour or crumbs, fry in butter or fat. Squash holds far less water than eggplant, so 20 minutes of salting is plenty, and a hot pan matters more than a long soak.
- Winter squashBoiling winter squash, as directed at the end, waterlogs it. Halving and roasting cut-side down at 400F until collapsing gives a drier, sweeter flesh that mashes without draining.
- The butterThe closing line is the operative instruction. Reckon on 2 to 3 tablespoons per pound of cooked flesh; squash takes a good deal of fat and salt.
- YieldNo quantities are given. Two pounds of summer squash, trimmed and cooked down, serves four as a side dish.
Squash is one of the few vegetables in a book like this that is wholly American in origin — the domesticated cucurbits of Mesoamerica and the eastern woodlands, grown alongside corn and beans long before European contact. The English word is generally traced to a shortening of the Narragansett askutasquash, and the regional vocabulary preserved here shows how local the crop stayed: "cymlin," recorded in Southern writing from the eighteenth century onward, was still the ordinary word for a pattypan when this was written. The page belongs to the turn-of-the-century genre of compendia aimed at the household manager rather than the cook, which is why the entry reads as a comparative survey — three varieties, two methods, and an opinion — instead of a single formula with measurements. The frank admission that boiled squash is "rather watery" is the sort of remark that rarely survived into more polished cookbooks.