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Mashed Squash
Cut a small squash in pieces, peel and remove all the spongy part place in saucepan with enough water to cover, add a teaspoon salt, then boil for forty-five minutes, or till soft. Drain on a sieve, press them through potato masher into a saucepan, add one ounce good butter, season with a light teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper, stir on fire for two minutes, remove, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A plain winter-squash purée of the sort that filled out a vegetable course a century ago. The only real problem is the cooking time.
- Forty-five minutes is too longCut into 2-inch pieces, most winter squash is tender in 15 to 20 minutes of boiling. Left the full three-quarters of an hour it waterlogs and the purée turns thin and grey-tasting.
- Drain hard, then dryBoiled squash holds a great deal of water. After draining, return the pieces to the dry pan over low heat for a minute or two before mashing, or the butter will not bind and the dish will weep on the plate.
- "Spongy part"The seeds and the loose stringy fibre around them. Scrape the cavity clean with a spoon; the firm flesh next to it is fine.
- Which squashA "small squash" here means a hard-shelled winter type -- butternut, acorn, Hubbard, kabocha. Summer squash and zucchini have far too much water for this treatment.
- One ounce butterTwo tablespoons. The recipe gives no weight; assume roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb for a small squash. Modest by present-day standards; more will not hurt.
- SeasoningA light teaspoon of salt plus a half teaspoon of pepper is a lot of pepper for a small squash. Add the pepper in stages and taste.
- YieldA 2 lb squash gives four small side servings. It reheats well, and steaming or roasting the pieces instead of boiling gives a noticeably sweeter, denser purée.
Squash is one of the American contributions to the European table -- the word itself comes from a Narragansett term, generally given as askutasquash, which English colonists shortened. The phrasing here reads more like a professional kitchen than a home cook writing for herself: "press them through potato masher," "dress on a vegetable dish and serve." Long boiling times for vegetables were common in printed recipes of this period, and an older, tougher storage squash may genuinely have needed longer than a freshly harvested one.