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Mashed Pumpkin
Pare off the rind of a large slice of pumpkin, remove the seeds and cut it into square; place the pieces of pumpkin in a stewpan with a large lump of butter and a small quantity of water, season to taste with pepper and salt and stew over a gentle fire until quite soft. Mash the pumpkin with a wooden spoon and pass it through a fine hair-sieve. Put one ounce of butter in a saucepan with one tablespoonful of flour, mix it over the fire, and then stir in the pumpkin pulp, moistening with a little milk and seasoning with grated nutmeg. Stir the whole over the fire until very hot, then pile it on a hot dish, garnish with sippets of toast or croutons of fried bread, and serve.
A savoury pumpkin purée finished with a roux, of the kind that appeared as a vegetable side rather than a dessert. Nothing here is difficult; the only real work is getting the pulp dry enough that the butter and flour have something to bind.
- Drive off the water firstThe hinge of the dish is moisture. Stew the pumpkin covered with only a few tablespoons of water, then uncover for the last several minutes so the pulp steams dry, otherwise the finished purée slumps on the plate instead of piling.
- Which pumpkinA field or jack-o'-lantern pumpkin is watery and bland. Use a sugar pumpkin, kabocha, or butternut squash — roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb before peeling and seeding, which gives about 4 servings.
- Gentle fireLow heat on the smallest burner, lid on, 20 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the cubes. The pumpkin should collapse under the spoon before you mash it.
- Hair sieveA fine sieve of horsehair, used to catch fibres and skin. A food mill on the fine plate or a drum sieve does the same job; a blender does not, since it purées the fibres in rather than removing them.
- The rouxOne ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons, with a tablespoon of flour. Cook the two together a minute or two without colouring before the pulp goes in, or the finished dish tastes of raw flour.
- Milk and nutmegAdd the milk a spoonful at a time — a quarter cup is usually plenty. Grate the nutmeg fresh; the pre-ground jar has lost most of what makes it worth adding here.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toast; the word is older in English than crouton. The recipe distinguishes the two options: sippets of toast, or croutons of bread fried in butter or clarified butter. Set them around the edge of the mound just before serving, so they stay crisp.
- ServingServe it hot, as a vegetable alongside roast pork, duck, or game. It will not hold well — the roux stiffens and the purée turns pasty as it cools.
Savoury pumpkin held a steadier place on nineteenth-century tables than it does now, when the vegetable is largely conscripted into pie. The recipe shows the seam between native produce and classical French method plainly: a squash treated with a sieve and a butter-and-flour liaison of the kind used for purees of root vegetables. Fried bread around the dish was a common garnish for soft purees, giving the plate a contrast in texture and a visible frame. Pumpkin was cheap and abundant in the northeastern markets through autumn.