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Fried Squash
Pare and cut three squashes into slices a quarter of an inch thick. Dust with salt and pepper. Dip first in egg, then in bread crumbs. Fry the same as egg-plant.
A single paragraph that assumes you have already read the eggplant recipe a few pages earlier. Everything that matters is in what it leaves out.
- Which squash"Squashes" here almost certainly means summer squash — yellow crookneck or a similar thin-skinned variety — rather than a winter squash. Zucchini works identically. Three of them, sliced, should feed about four as a side.
- ParingModern summer squash has skin tender enough to leave on; the direction to pare may reflect thicker-skinned varieties of the period, though the recipe gives no reason. Winter squash would need peeling, and would also need parcooking before it fried through.
- The frying, spelled outThe book sends you back to the egg-plant directions. In modern terms that means shallow or deep frying in fat at roughly 365-375F until golden, two to three minutes a side, then draining on paper. Fat much cooler than that soaks in; much hotter browns the crumbs before the squash softens.
- Salting firstSummer squash carries a great deal of water. Salting the slices and letting them stand fifteen to twenty minutes, then blotting dry, gives a crust that stays put instead of steaming loose from the flesh.
- Breading orderA dip in flour before the egg gives the coating something to grip on a wet-cut vegetable. The original skips it, which is why the crumbs on quarter-inch slices often slide.
- ThicknessA quarter inch is worth respecting — thick enough not to collapse, thin enough to cook through in the time the crumbs take to color.
- ServingFry in batches so the fat stays hot, hold the finished slices in a single layer in a 200F oven, and serve at once. Stacked or covered, the crust goes limp within minutes.
Egg-and-crumb frying appears often enough in American cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, applied to eggplant, tomatoes, salsify, parsnips and summer squash — which is why this entry can dispose of the method with a cross-reference. Summer squash itself is a New World crop, one of the domesticated Cucurbita pepo group grown in the Americas long before European contact, and the crookneck and pattypan types were common in nineteenth-century American gardens.