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Boiled Squash
Choose the hard, yellow squash, cut it into pieces of medium size, peel the pieces, and remove the seeds and the soft mesh surrounding them. Boil gently in plenty of water for forty minutes or until the squash is tender. Then drain off the water, return the squash to the kettle, let it stand for five minutes tightly covered, mash it fine and place it, uncovered, for ten minutes in a good heat to dry, stirring frequently, while drying. Season with butter, salt and pepper.
A plain method for winter squash that hinges entirely on driving off water. The steps that look fussy — the covered rest, the ten minutes uncovered over heat — are what keep the purée from being soup.
- What "hard, yellow squash" meansThis is winter squash: Hubbard, butternut, kabocha or the old-fashioned crookneck, not summer squash or zucchini. Butternut is the easiest modern substitute and needs the least peeling.
- "A good heat"On a modern range this is medium, or medium-low if the pan is thin. The squash is drying, not browning, so stir often and pull it back if it starts to catch.
- TimingForty minutes is long for cut, peeled pieces; most winter squash is fork-tender in 15 to 25 minutes depending on size. Test early and go by the fork rather than the clock.
- Boiling versus steamingBoiling in plenty of water waterlogs the flesh, which is why the recipe then spends fifteen minutes getting the water back out. Steaming, or roasting the halves cut side down, skips that problem entirely if you would rather not fight it.
- The covered restFive minutes tightly covered off the water lets residual heat finish softening the pieces. The recipe treats it as part of the method, though it gives no reason for it.
- KettleIn cookery of this period a kettle is generally a deep, heavy pot, not a tea kettle. Use whatever you boiled the squash in.
- Seasoning and yieldNo quantities are given: figure a tablespoon of butter per pound of trimmed squash, then salt and pepper to taste. A 2 to 2 1/2 lb squash yields about four side servings.
Winter squash is one of the oldest cultivated foods of the Americas, grown alongside corn and beans long before European contact, and it entered English-language cookery as a New World vegetable. By the time The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, hard-shelled varieties like the Hubbard — often traced to seed brought into Marblehead, Massachusetts, in the early nineteenth century and popularized by the seedsman James J. H. Gregory — were staple keeping vegetables, stored in cellars through winter and cooked plainly. The insistence on drying the mash reflects a period preoccupation with "watery" vegetables.