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Winter Squash
Cut up, take out inside, pare the pieces and stew in as little water as possible, cook an hour, mash in kettle, and if watery, let stand on the fire a few moments, stirring until dry; season with butter, cream, salt and pepper; be careful that it does not burn. Winter squashes are also cooked by cutting in pieces without paring, baking, and serving like potatoes; or they may be cooked in a steamer, and served either in the shell, or scraped out, put in pan, mashed, and seasoned with butter, cream, salt and pepper, and then made hot and served.
Three methods for one vegetable: stewed and mashed, baked in the shell, or steamed. The instructions assume a heavy iron kettle over an unpredictable fire, so most of the fussing is about driving off water without scorching.
- The hinge is drynessWinter squash holds a great deal of water, and mashing it wet gives a soupy purée that no amount of butter will fix. Cook off the excess moisture over low heat, stirring constantly, before any dairy goes in.
- An hour is for the kettle, not the potPeeled chunks of butternut, kabocha or Hubbard simmer tender in 20 to 25 minutes in a modern pan with a lid. An hour will still work but produces a wetter, flatter-tasting mash.
- "Winter squash" in 1880s Dixie"Winter squash" in the 1880s South -- likely to have meant Hubbard, cushaw and the thick-rinded winter crookneck types with dense flesh, kept in a cellar for months. Butternut or kabocha are the closest common stand-ins; delicata and acorn are thinner-fleshed and cook faster.
- Baking temperatureThe book gives none. Halve or quarter the squash, cut side down, and bake at 400F for 40 to 60 minutes depending on thickness, until a knife meets no resistance.
- Paring thick-rinded squashHubbard and cushaw rinds resist a vegetable peeler entirely. Cut the squash into wedges first, then run a sturdy knife between flesh and rind, or take the baking route and scoop the flesh out afterward.
- Seasoning quantitiesFor about 2 lb of cooked flesh, start with 2 tablespoons butter and 2 to 3 tablespoons cream, then salt firmly; squash needs more salt than cooks expect. A grating of nutmeg is period-appropriate and welcome.
- YieldA 3 lb squash yields roughly 2 lb of usable flesh, enough for four to six as a side dish.
- ScorchingThe warning about burning is real in cast iron. Once the purée is thick it sticks fast, so use a wide heavy pan, keep the heat moderate and scrape the bottom of the pan rather than just stirring the middle.
Winter squash is one of the American vegetables that needed no introduction to a nineteenth-century Southern kitchen: it was grown from Indigenous seed stock long before European settlement, stored through the cold months without processing, and treated in cookbooks as a near-equivalent of the potato — hence this recipe's instruction to bake it in pieces and serve it the same way. That the entry offers three methods and no measurements is typical of The Dixie Cook Book and of household manuals generally in the 1880s; the writer assumes the reader has cooked squash many times and needs only a reminder of the order of operations. The cushaw and Hubbard types familiar to cooks then — Hubbard a comparatively recent nineteenth-century introduction rather than an ancient Indigenous keeper — were large, hard-rinded keepers, better suited to a cellar shelf than to a modern refrigerator, and the emphasis on drying the mash on the fire reflects flesh considerably wetter and stringier than the bred-for-sweetness butternut familiar to many cooks now.