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Winter Squash
Cut off top of small Hubbard squash, remove seeds and stringy portion, place in pan and steam or bake about two hours until tender. Remove pulp from shell, keeping large shell intact; put pulp through ricer, season with salt, pepper and butter, and 2 tablespoons of cream. If desired, a little sugar or molasses may also be added, and return to shell. Smooth surface to a dome shape and score with knife, brush over with milk and egg, add specks of butter, then place in oven a few minutes. Serve on a folded napkin on individual plates, or on chop plates. Part of second squash is needed to make a full shell.
A stuffed-squash presentation from the era of the chafing dish and the folded napkin. The method is sound; only the oven guidance and the timings need translating.
- Bake hot, not slowThe original gives no temperature. Bake at 375-400F, cut side down on a lightly oiled sheet; a small Hubbard should be tender well before two hours, and steaming is quicker still. The two-hour figure reflects the uneven heat of a wood range.
- Choosing the squashHubbards run large, and the blue Hubbards sold now are usually far too big for a single serving shell. Buttercup, kabocha or acorn squash give the same dense flesh in a shell the right size, and acorn is small enough that a second squash may not be needed to fill it.
- The ricerA ricer or food mill gives the dry, fluffy texture the recipe is after. A food processor turns squash gluey; if you only have one, mash by hand instead.
- Drain the pulpThis is the hinge. Hubbard flesh carries a lot of water, and wet pulp will slump out of its dome shape. Let the riced squash steam dry in the pan over low heat for a minute or two before seasoning.
- Butter and creamTwo tablespoons of cream is a modest amount for the pulp of one small squash; add 2-3 tablespoons of butter with it. Sugar or molasses is optional, as the recipe says; a tablespoon is plenty.
- The glaze"Brush over with milk and egg" most likely means an egg beaten with a spoonful of milk, painted on the scored surface. A few minutes in a hot oven -- around 425F, though the original gives no temperature -- or a minute under the broiler browns the ridges.
- Yield and servingThe recipe directs the filled shell to individual plates or chop plates; a small shell will do as a side for one or two. The folded napkin would also have steadied a hot, round-bottomed shell; a ring of crumpled foil or a small bowl does the same job.
The Hubbard squash was popularized in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century by the seedsman James J. H. Gregory of Marblehead, who named it, by his own account, after a Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard, a neighbor who had passed the seed along; by 1900 it was, by most accounts, among the most widely grown American winter squashes, a hard-shelled keeper that sat in cellars until spring. Serving vegetables back in their own shells seems to have been a common enough device of turn-of-the-century domestic-science cookery, which prized dishes that looked composed and individual without costing much, and the instruction to serve "on a folded napkin" belongs to the same school of table manners as the fish napkin and the doily under the finger bowl. The Metropolitan Cook Book, issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and distributed free to policyholders, carried that genteel style into ordinary kitchens on a very large scale.