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Winter Squash
When the shell is hard, split the squash, remove the seeds, and steam or boil until soft. Scrape out the soft part of the squash, and to every pint add a tablespoon of butter, one-half teaspoon of sugar and salt and pepper to taste.
A plain mash, and the whole of its success rests on getting the water out. The 1911 instruction to steam rather than boil is the better of the two options given.
- Steam, don't boilBoiled squash halves absorb water and the mash turns to soup. Steam over an inch of water, or roast the halves cut side down at 400F for 40-50 minutes, which drives off moisture instead of adding it.
- A pint means volume, not weightA pint of scraped pulp is two cups, roughly a pound. A 3-4 lb squash yields somewhere around three to four cups of flesh, so scale the butter and sugar accordingly.
- "When the shell is hard"This refers to selecting a cured squash, not a stage of cooking. Hubbard, buttercup, kabocha and butternut all work; the hard rind is the sign it has cured and will mash dry rather than watery.
- Half a teaspoon of sugarThis is seasoning, not sweetening -- it lifts the squash the way a pinch of sugar lifts tomatoes. Many squash sold today are sweet enough on their own, so taste before adding any.
- Dry it out furtherIf the mash still weeps, return it to the pan over low heat and stir a few minutes until it stiffens, before the butter goes in.
- ScrapingA sturdy spoon works, but the flesh close to the rind is stringy in Hubbard types. Stop short of it, or pass the whole mash through a ricer or food mill.
- YieldAbout four servings from two cups of pulp as a side dish.
Winter squash is one of the American vegetables that entered European cookery from the other direction: the cucurbits of this type were domesticated in the Americas long before contact, and the word squash is generally traced to a Narragansett term shortened by English settlers. By the time The Butterick Cook Book appeared in 1911, hard-shelled varieties such as the Hubbard were a staple of the Northern winter cellar precisely because they kept for months without canning or root-pit storage. The recipe's brevity is telling -- Butterick's readers needed no persuading to eat squash, only a reminder of the ratio of butter to pulp, which is the difference between a side dish and a bowl of orange water.