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Stewed Pumpkin
Peel and remove the seeds from a pumpkin, and partially boil it, drain it well, wipe on a cloth, and cut it into small pieces. Put about three ounces of butter into a stewpan to melt and then put in the pieces of pumpkin; season to taste with pepper, salt and a little grated nutmeg, and toss them over the fire until quite soft. Butter a dish that will stand the heat of the oven, and at the same time can be served on the table; turn the pumpkin mixture on to it, sprinkle over it plenty of grated Parmesan cheese and a few grated breadcrumbs, and stand the dish in a brisk oven for ten minutes, or until browned over the top. Serve in the same dish the pumpkins while hot.
A straightforward gratin that depends almost entirely on getting the pumpkin dry before it meets the butter. The original leaves quantities and oven heat vague, so here is what the vague parts mean.
- Brisk ovenIn this period "brisk" generally means hot, somewhere in the range of 400-450F. Ten minutes at that heat is enough to brown the cheese and crumbs.
- Choose the right pumpkinA field or jack-o'-lantern pumpkin is watery and stringy. Use a dense culinary squash — sugar pumpkin, kabocha, butternut — roughly 3 lb whole, which yields about 2 lb of prepared flesh.
- The hinge: dry it thoroughly"Partially boil, drain well, wipe on a cloth" is the whole recipe in miniature. Undercook the boil deliberately (5-8 minutes, just yielding), then drain and blot hard. Wet pumpkin will weep in the stewpan and you end up with purée under a crust rather than distinct pieces.
- Three ounces of butterSix tablespoons, or 85 g. It is a generous amount for 2 lb of squash and it is doing the frying, not just the seasoning; do not cut it much or the pieces stick and steam.
- Tossing over the fireDirect flame under a stewpan on a modern range means medium-high heat, about 8-10 minutes with regular tossing. Some pieces will collapse at the edges — that is wanted, it binds the dish.
- Parmesan and crumbs"Plenty" is around 3 oz (¾ cup) grated Parmesan to "a few" crumbs — roughly 2 tablespoons. The cheese is the body of the topping and the crumbs only give it texture, which is the reverse of most modern gratins.
- Dish and yieldAny shallow ceramic or cast-iron gratin dish of about 8-9 inches works as the serve-at-table vessel the recipe calls for. Serves four as a side.
The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) carries the name of Oscar Tschirky, the hotel's maitre d'hotel, and its vegetable chapter has a continental leaning: this is essentially an Italian-style pumpkin gratin, finished with Parmesan and browned crumbs, rather than anything from the American pie-and-sweet-spice tradition. Pumpkin in nineteenth-century American cooking was most often a sweet or a plainly stewed vegetable, so treating it as a savoury cheese-crusted side dish, seasoned with nutmeg and served in the vessel it browned in, reads as a restaurant gesture. The instruction to use a dish that will "stand the heat of the oven, and at the same time can be served on the table" is worth noting on its own.