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Cream of Squash Soup
1 pint of mashed squash 1 quart milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar Whipped cream Put the squash, which may be freshly cooked or canned, with the milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan, and heat. Mix the butter and flour together, and stir the hot liquid into it. Cook gently for five minutes. Place a spoon of whipped cream on top of each individual serving.
A straightforward milk-thickened purée soup; the only technical point is the thickening, which the original handles backwards from modern habit.
- The thickening stepCreaming raw butter and flour together and stirring hot liquid into it makes a beurre manié, not a roux. It works, but whisk the hot milk in gradually or the paste will set into lumps; alternatively cook the butter and flour together for a minute or two first, then add the liquid.
- A pint of mashed squashThat is 2 cups of cooked pur fwhich takes roughly 2 lb of winter squash fbabout one small butternut. A 15 oz can of unsweetened pumpkin or squash pur fis close enough.
- Squash, not summer squashIn American cookbooks of this general era "squash" without qualification usually means a hard winter squash such as Hubbard or turban. Zucchini or yellow summer squash will give a thin, watery soup.
- Canned puréeCheck that it is plain squash or pumpkin with nothing added. Pie filling is already sweetened and spiced and will overwhelm the 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar called for.
- Heat, do not boilA quart of milk with only a tablespoon of flour to protect it will scorch on the bottom and skin on top. Keep it below a simmer and stir; the five minutes of gentle cooking is only to lose the raw taste of the flour.
- SeasoningOne teaspoon of salt for roughly six cups of soup is modest by current taste; season again at the end. A grating of nutmeg or a little white pepper is period-appropriate and does the soup no harm.
- YieldAbout 6 cups on the recipe's own quantities, serving four generously. Whip the cream unsweetened, and spoon it on at the table so it does not melt away.
The sugar, which looks odd to a modern palate, is common in period squash and pumpkin cookery, where the vegetable sat comfortably on either side of the sweet-savory line and appeared in pies and puddings as readily as in soups. Winter squashes are New World crops, grown in the Americas for thousands of years before European contact, and they suited a household economy well: a Hubbard kept in a cool cellar for months, so squash soup was a dish available long after the garden was finished.