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To Bake Squash (Pare and cut in pieces put)
Pare and cut in pieces, put in a crock, cover closely and bake two hours; then mash smooth and season highly with butter, salt and white pepper.
A bare-bones method for baked winter squash that relies on a tightly covered vessel and a long, gentle oven. The original gives no temperature, no quantity and no yield, so a few decisions have to be made for it.
- The hinge: no added liquidNothing goes into the crock but squash, so the tight cover is doing all the work — the flesh steams in its own moisture. A loose lid, or a modern casserole with a vent hole, will dry the squash out and scorch the bottom before two hours are up. Foil under the lid solves it.
- "A crock"A lidded stoneware or earthenware jar of the sort commonly used for storing lard and pickles, pressed into service here as a baking dish. A heavy covered Dutch oven or a deep casserole with a well-fitting lid does the same job.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Two hours implies a moderate to slow oven, 325-350F; the squash should collapse rather than brown. At 400F it will caramelize and dry at the edges long before it is uniformly soft.
- Which squashThis means a hard winter squash — Hubbard, turban or a field pumpkin in the period, butternut or kabocha today. Summer squash would turn to water in twenty minutes.
- ParingPeeling a raw Hubbard is genuinely difficult work. Halving the squash, scraping the seeds, baking it cut side down and scooping the flesh out afterwards gets you to the same mash with less risk to your hands.
- TimingTwo hours suits a large, dense squash in big chunks. Butternut cut into two-inch pieces is fully tender in 45-60 minutes covered; test with a knife rather than the clock.
- "Season highly"The instruction points to a generous hand with butter and pepper; figure about 2 tablespoons butter per pound of cooked flesh, plus salt, and adjust. White pepper is specified, probably so that no dark flecks show in the orange flesh; its heat is often described as muskier than black.
- YieldA 3 lb squash gives roughly 4 cups of mash, serving six as a side dish. If the flesh is watery after mashing, dry it out for a few minutes in the uncovered pan over low heat before adding the butter.
Winter squash is one of the few genuinely American items in a book like this — a New World cultigen grown across the continent long before European arrival, and by 1900 a common autumn and winter vegetable in American kitchen gardens. The Hubbard, popularized in New England in the mid-nineteenth century, was among the household varieties of the period: enormous, hard-shelled and known for keeping in a cool cellar until spring, which is why recipes of this era can assume a squash is on hand in February. A covered crock of this kind suited the wood or coal range, where it could sit in the falling heat after bread or a roast came out with little attention.