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Winter Squash
Cut in pieces, remove seeds and pare as thin as possible; steam or boil until soft and tender. Drain and press well, mash with butter, salt, pepper and sugar.
Cook summer squash the same way. If extremely tender they need not be pared.
A plain mashed squash with no quantities given, which is typical of the period — the cook was expected to season by taste. A few notes make it reliable.
- Drain and press, seriouslyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Boiled or steamed winter squash holds a great deal of water, and mash made without pressing it out turns to soup. Drain in a colander, press with the back of a spoon or through a clean towel, and return the flesh to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two to steam off the rest.
- QuantitiesFor roughly 2 lb of trimmed squash, start with 2 tablespoons butter, a teaspoon of salt, pepper to taste and no more than a teaspoon of sugar. That serves four as a side.
- Paring thinWith hubbard, kabocha or blue squash the rind is hard enough to be a nuisance raw. Steam the pieces skin-on until tender and the flesh scoops out with a spoon, which is easier and wastes less than paring.
- On the sugarSome widely grown modern squashes, such as butternut (a twentieth-century introduction), are notably sweet, so the sugar here may not be needed. Taste before adding any.
- Summer squashThe instruction to treat summer squash the same way holds, but it cooks in a fraction of the time — 5 to 8 minutes — and it is far wetter. Salting the cut pieces and letting them drain before cooking helps considerably.
- TimingSteamed in 2-inch pieces, winter squash takes roughly 15 to 25 minutes depending on variety. It is done when a knife meets no resistance.
- Baking insteadRoasting halves cut-side down at 400F for 40 to 50 minutes concentrates flavour rather than diluting it, and skips the pressing step entirely. The finish with butter, salt, pepper and sugar is unchanged.
Winter squash is one of the New World crops that entered European and then American cooking so early and so thoroughly that by 1900 it read as thoroughly domestic — squashes were grown across North America long before contact, and the English word comes from a Narragansett term, usually given as askutasquash. The habit of finishing the mash with sugar as well as butter and pepper, seen here, is a long-standing American treatment that sits the vegetable halfway between side dish and dessert, the same instinct that produced squash and pumpkin pie. The recipe gives no measurements and no timings, an omission common in household cookbooks of the period.