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Squash Puffs
Press dry cooked squash through a sieve; to each cupful add 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, 4 tablespoonfuls of milk, salt and pepper to taste, 2 beaten egg yolks. When well beaten fold in carefully the 2 whites stiffly beaten. Turn into buttered cups or molds, stand in a pan of hot water, place in a moderate oven until firm in the center. Turn out carefully and serve with a good white sauce.
A hot-water-bath custard built on winter squash, closer to a soufflé than a side dish. The ratios are per cup of squash purée, so it scales cleanly.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" in books of this period is roughly 325-375F; for a water-bath custard, aim at the lower end, around 325-350F. Higher and the egg curdles at the edges before the center sets.
- Which squashUse a dense winter squash — butternut, kabocha, Hubbard — roasted or steamed rather than boiled. Summer squash carries far too much water for this to hold.
- Dry means dryThis is the hinge. After sieving, return the purée to a dry pan over low heat and stir until it stops weeping and pulls away from the sides. Wet purée gives a puff that collapses into a puddle when turned out.
- Sieve or notA food processor or food mill does the work of pressing through a sieve, but for a truly smooth custard still pass the purée through a fine strainer afterward to catch fiber.
- The molds"Buttered cups" are ramekins or dariole molds, 4 to 6 oz each. Butter them generously and dust with fine dry crumbs if you intend to unmold.
- Water bathHot water should come halfway up the molds. Set them on a folded towel in the pan so the bottoms don't scorch.
- Timing and donenessExpect 25 to 35 minutes for 4-oz molds. Firm in the center means a gentle wobble only, and a knife inserted at the edge comes out clean; carried further the custard weeps.
- UnmoldingRest the molds out of the water for 5 to 10 minutes before turning out. Straight from the bath they are too fragile to hold their shape.
- Yield and sauceOne cup of squash with 2 yolks fills three to four small molds. The "good white sauce" is a plain béchamel — 1 tbsp each butter and flour to 1 cup milk, seasoned, with nutmeg if you like.
Baking a vegetable purée bound with eggs in individual molds and turning it out was a standard trick of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookery, borrowed from the French timbale and appearing in household manuals as "puffs," "soufflés," or "custards" depending on the writer. The economy of such a dish is easy to see: a cupful of squash, two eggs and a little milk stretch into several dressed-up portions, and the white sauce turns a cheap vegetable into a course that can be sent to the table on its own. Winter squash was among the most reliably cheap keepers in the American cellar, and it turns up again and again in books of this kind — soups, pies, biscuits, and puffs like these.