HFF 4.1: One Last Holiday Hurrah

It's season 4!

The Challenge: Pick a holiday, any holiday, and start the New Year with some in- or out-of-season merriment. 
I thought going into this challenge that I'd end up with either a fun Christmas recipe that I didn't have time for in December, or maybe an interesting Easter receipt. Unfortunately, my trawl through Victorian (and a couple medieval) cookbooks didn't reveal many specific holiday foods, at least under the search terms I was using. There are hot cross buns for Good Friday (which I've made a few times), and a couple Mardi Gras recipes (Tarte owte of Lent, pancakes), and then the run of Christmas and New Years' recipes  (Wassail, Mince Pie, Christmas Cake, Plum Cake, Twelfth Cake, more Twelfth Cake, New Year's Cookies, Rocky Mountain Punch, Cherry Bounce). In the spirit of not repeating things (and lacking the time/means/audience for the larger meat dishes), I decided to try cooking a winter squash, as shows up in some of the Christmas dinner menus.

The Recipe: Winter squash is on the Christmas dinner bill of fare in Miss Leslie's 1847 The Lady's Receipt-Book (copied verbatim in Godey's in January 1860).  I ended up turning to Mrs. Bliss's 1860 The Practical Cook Book for how to actually cook it.

The Date/Year and Region: 1860, Philadelphia

How Did You Make It:  I pared the squash; as the instructions did not specify further, I removed the seeds but left the shell on (the shell came off easily once cooked, as I hoped). I then set the squash to stew in water on the stovetop on medium heat for 45 minutes. Once tender, I drained the water, peeled off the shell, and mashed the squash with 2 oz of unsalted butter (being what I had on hand) and a generous pinch of salt (about 1/4-1/2 tsp).

Time to Complete: An hour.  It took 45 minutes to boil the squash, preceeded by about 5 minutes of preparing/paring it and followed by 10 minutes of peeling/mashing/letting the butter melt.

Total Cost: $4.50: four dollars for a 2lb squash and 50 cents worth of butter

How Successful Was It?:   Alright. The texture of the spaghetti squash was the least appealing part (it lived up to its name, and became stringy as mashed). The flavor was fine: it's hard to go wrong with butter and salt, though I think slightly less butter and possibly a touch more salt would be worth trying. I'd definitely try a different type of squash next time. I picked the spaghetti squash basically at random, as there were no marrows to be had at the store, but on cutting it proved to be rather different from the marrow (harder shell, stringier seed area, stronger flavor).

How Accurate Is It?: The squash type is the big issue here (there being three whole ingredients in the recipe). So, I'd like to try this again with some vegetable marrow or another definitely-period variety of winter squash.

It looks so appetizing... the squash actually tasted
alright, but there's room for improvement.