Squash Pie
1 cup sugar, 1 tbsp. butter, 2 eggs, 1 heaping tbsp. flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, few drops of lemon, 1 cup strained squash, 1 pint of hot milk. Cream sugar, add butter; add flour and beaten eggs, salt and nutmeg, lemon and squash, beaten together and add to milk. Sprinkle 1 tbsp. of sugar in bottom of lined pie plate. Bake in hot oven first, then cooler.
— Mrs. F. E. Haines
A New England-style custard pie, thinner and milkier than most modern pumpkin pies. The proportions are the thing to watch: a pint of milk to a single cup of squash makes a very loose filling.
- Volume and pansBetween the milk, squash, eggs and sugar this comes to roughly a quart of filling, which is at or a little past what a standard 9-inch shell will hold. Be ready for a deep-dish shell, or a second plate for the overflow.
- Strained squashThis means winter squash (Hubbard, buttercup or butternut) cooked until tender, drained well and pressed through a sieve. Canned pumpkin or squash purée substitutes directly; if it is watery, drain it in a cloth first or the custard will weep.
- Hot milkAdding a pint of hot milk to beaten eggs will scramble them if done all at once. Pour it in slowly while whisking, or warm the milk only to the point where steam rises rather than to a boil.
- The oven"Hot oven first, then cooler" is the standard custard-pie method; the recipe gives no numbers. A modern equivalent would be a start around 425–450F to set the pastry, then a drop to 325–350F until the filling is set. The hot start is what helps keep the bottom crust from going soggy under a wet filling.
- Sugar in the shellThe tablespoon of sugar sprinkled on the pastry before filling turns up in other custard pies of the period; it is generally explained as a barrier between wet filling and crust rather than as sweetening. Worth keeping.
- Few drops of lemonMost likely lemon extract, a common pantry flavouring in this period, and "few drops" suits an extract better than juice. A quarter teaspoon of extract, or the grated zest of half a lemon, gives much the same effect.
- DonenessThe pie is done when the outer two inches are set and the centre still shivers as a single mass — around 175F at the middle. It firms as it cools; baking until the centre is solid produces a cracked, watery pie.
- ServingCool completely before cutting, at least three hours. A custard this thin slumps if sliced warm. Each pie gives six to eight slices.
Squash pie is often said to be the older New England claim, not a variation on pumpkin pie but a parallel one — colonial and nineteenth-century cooks used the two words loosely, and hard-shelled winter squash such as the Hubbard kept far better through the cold months than field pumpkin, which grows watery and stringy in storage. Well into the twentieth century, by traditional account, a New England cook asked for pumpkin pie would often reach for squash. This version, thickened with only a spoonful of flour and stretched with a full pint of milk, belongs to the thin, pale, faintly nutmegged style of the region rather than the dense spiced filling that canned pumpkin later standardised. Its appearance in a Philathea cook book — the Philathea classes were adult Bible-study groups for young women, and their fundraising cookbooks collected contributions by name — explains the shorthand: Mrs. Haines was writing for neighbours who already knew what a hot oven felt like.