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Fried Squash
The white "button" squash about four inches in diameter are best when fried. Cut the vegetable into thin slices, dip in beaten egg, then in seasoned bread or cracker dust, and fry in hot fat. Place a colander in a granite saucepan; lay a soft yellow paper in the colander, and as the slices become brown place them on the paper; set the saucepan in the oven or in a warm place on the range. The paper will absorb all of the oil that may be left in the squash. Serve on a platter or other flat dish. Fried squash forms an excellent luncheon dish.
A straightforward egg-and-crumb fry. Almost everything that needs translating here is equipment and paper.
- What the squash isThe white "button" squash is the scallop or pattypan squash, sold today under both names and often smaller than four inches. Young ones need no peeling and no seeding; older ones with a hard rind and developed seeds are not worth frying.
- Slice thickness"Thin" is not defined; about a quarter inch works well. Thinner slices tend to collapse into the coating, thicker ones can stay watery in the centre before the crumbs brown.
- Cracker dustFinely crushed plain soda crackers, sieved. It browns faster and lighter than bread crumbs, so watch the fat temperature. Panko is not a substitute in texture but works if you want more crunch.
- Fat temperatureFor a shallow fry of this kind, around 365F. Below that the squash absorbs more oil, and the paper in the colander is there to take up whatever oil is left in the slices.
- Granite saucepanGraniteware, meaning enamelled sheet steel, not stone. Any ovenproof pan will do, or skip the assembly entirely and drain on a rack set over a sheet pan.
- Soft yellow paperUnbleached, unglazed absorbent paper of a kind then commonly used for wrapping. Paper towels do the same job. Setting the colander over a pan in a warm place appears to let draining and holding happen together without steaming the crust.
- Warm placeThe book gives no temperature; a low oven, around 200F with the door slightly ajar, holds the fried slices without cooking them further while the rest of the batch fries.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Two four-inch pattypan squash will make a small luncheon dish for a few people. Salt the slices as they come out of the fat, not before dipping.
Pattypan is an American squash, one of the summer Cucurbita pepo forms that were grown in eastern North America long before European settlement and were later distributed under a scatter of names: scallop, cymling, button, custard marrow. The cookbook is pitched in a plain, practical register, and the closing line is the giveaway about how the dish was meant to be used. Luncheon in a household of this period is often said to have been the lighter meal, and a platter of crisp fried vegetable slices was exactly the sort of thing it called for. The elaborate colander-and-paper draining rig reflects a kitchen where absorbent paper was a bought commodity rather than something torn off a roll, and where a greasy fried dish was a genuine failure of technique.