September is the harvest month–the time to gather the abundant bounty from our summer gardens . And nothing demonstrates abundance quite so well as zucchini squash. It’s so easy to grow that even a complete amateur gardener can produce more zucchini than any family can reasonably eat in one season. Zucchini grows well in almost any soil, survives drought and neglect and even produces when choked by weeds left by the lazy gardener. But zucchini is a relative newcomer to the panoply of summer squashes. It is a hybrid variety of Cucurbita pepo (all summer squashes belong to this family), developed in Italy in the second half of the 19th century. The first records of zucchini in America are not quite a hundred years old, dating from the 1920’s.
So this summer, I decided to explore the summer squashes more likely to appear on Colonial tables. Of course all squashes are native to the Americas, where they have been eaten since prehistoric times. The word ‘squash’ even comes from the native word ‘askutasquash’–which means the fruit eaten green or immature (that is, summer squash).
The earliest European explorers noticed native-grown squash, though they often thought of this novel food as varieties of cucumbers or melons. Good things travel fast and so by the 16th century, squash was commonly found in European gardens.
Squash hybrids easily, sharing traits with neighboring squashes, which explains why there are so many varieties. One of the earliest mentions of summer squash I found was in 1562, in Fuch’s Vienna Codex. He described what he called cucumer paniformis, so named because the pale green squash resembled a scalloped-edge baking pan. You might recognize this as patty pan squash.
The patty pan squash was one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorites. He said they were “one of our finest and most innocent vegetables.” (seed packet) Patty pan squash were grown in Jefferson’s gardens at Monticello, in the gardens of enslaved African-Americans, and in kitchen gardens throughout the colonies.
This popular colonial-era squash had many different names based on its distinctive shape, including buckler squash, for its resemblance to a buckler-type shield. One of the most interesting names I came across was cymling (pronounced sim-lin) and also spelled symnel, simlin, or cimlin. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the earliest recorded use of this word for pattypan squash from 1648, in Beauchamp Plantagenet’s A Description of New Albion. Symnels or simnels were a Lenten cake, made for Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent. The day originated as a day to return to one’s ‘mother’ church, although in recent times it has become more like the American Mother’s Day. So how does a name for a cake get transferred to a squash? It turns out that simnels are a circular cake, with small round balls of almond paste decorating the circumference. Indeed, that’s a good description for a large pattypan squash.
Recipes from the 16th through the 18th centuries use pattypan squash in soups and stews. The most common suggestions are for boiling it and serving it with butter or cream. Pattypans were often harvested and eaten while they are very small, the size of large walnuts. The pattypan squash I used were larger, ranging from the size of an apple to the size of eight inch layer cake (because, like zucchini, pattypan squash seem to grow into giants overnight).
The following recipe comes from The Virgina Housewife (p. 110)
Squash or Cimlin
Gather Young squashes, peel, and cut them in two, take out the seeds, and boil them till tender; put them into a colander, drain off the water and rub them with a wood spoon through the colander; then put them into a stew pan with a cup full of cream, a small piece of butter, some pepper and salt–stew them, stirring very frequently until dry. This is the most delicate way of preparing squashes. (p. 110)
This original recipe calls for peeling the pattypan squash. I found that it is very difficult to peel because of the irregular shape. In the days of modern appliances, peeling the squash is unnecessary. Placing the boiled, unpeeled squash in a food processor and processing it for 2 minutes produces a sauce just as smooth as the colonial method of forcing the cooked squash through a colander.
My modern recipe for Pattypan Squash Puree:
3-4 large pattypan squash ¾ c. cream 3 T. butter Salt and pepper to taste
Wash the squash. Remove the seeds and stem ends. Cut into chunks. Cover with water and boil for twenty minutes, or until tender. Drain well. Puree in a food processor for two minutes. Add cream, butter, salt and pepper to the squash and simmer another ten minutes or until the mixture is as dry as you like it. The pureed squash can be eaten as a side dish. It also makes an excellent soup base. 
I’ve eaten pattypan squash many times, but I’d never grown it before. Using seeds from The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, I planted seven hills of cymlings.
They all grew. They all produced a prodigious number of pale green scalloped edge squash.
Obviously, pattypans are just as abundant as zucchini. Anybody want some?
Sources:
Cymling or Pattypan Squash. Seed packet from The Thomas Jefferson Center For Historic Plants. 2016
Curcurbits. Colonial Williamsburg. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2018. Colonial Williamsburg: That The Future May Learn From The Past
Randolph, Mary. The Virginia Housewife Or, Methodical Cook. T. E.H. Butler and Co. : Philadephia, 1860.
Simnel. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 1971.
Earlier this summer I had the very distinct pleasure of attending the popular rap-musical, Hamilton, with my daughter in Chicago. A lot has been written about this show, and its well-deserved popularity. Indeed, the music, the lyrics, the acting, the set, the choreography–all that and more are truly amazing. 
There are a number of challenges in following this recipe. First I had to figure out what it means to raise the crust. A raised crust is not, as I first thought, made from a yeast dough. Rather, a raised crust is a thicker crust made without a mold. So raising the crust means pushing the sides up to make a free-standing, pie-shaped bowl, often in a rectangular shape. 
P.S. Whoever invented the phrase ‘easy as pie,’ probably never made a scratch pie.
My favorite kind of history is the exploration of how people in the past dealt with the problems of living. In their fascinating displays about how other people have dealt with the problems of dying, National Museum of Funeral History earns my recommendation. And who knows…another Roscoe Gordon story could come out of our visit there.
Sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century, an adventurous (or careless) housewife added pearlash to her dough and the first chemical leavening was discovered. Before pearlash found its way into food, housewives had to use yeast or egg whites if they wanted their baked goods to rise. But it takes a long time to whip egg whites to a froth, and the resulting mix is not very stable. Yeast also takes a long time to work. Thus with the new chemical leavener, pearlash, cooks could bake ‘quick’ breads, a great convenience in the labor-intense colonial kitchen. 
Take for instance my kayaking trip with my great-nephew to Assateague Island from Chincoteague. At eleven years old, Ian was the youngest in the group, and I was clearly the oldest. He and I shared a double kayak. Everyone else, including our guide, was twenty-something. We crossed the bay from Chincoteague to Assateague. Once there, we beached on the mud flats, then walked across the mud and sand to the edge of the salt marsh. We saw the ponies way on the other side of the tall grass, but the real drama was on the mud. At our approach a ‘herd’ of fiddler crabs scuttled sideways to scramble under the driftwood. (The collective term for crabs is ‘cast’, but these creatures resembled a galloping herd or flowing wave more than anything else.)
BRIC-A-BRAC 