Old-Fashioned Squash and Apple Casserole

A late-eighteenth-century recipe for a pumpkin pie, from New Englander Mrs Anne Gibbons Gardiner, instructs the reader to bake sliced pumpkins and apples in a casserole-style dish sealed with an egg paste made of flour and egg. Betty Hardy, the matriarch of Brookdale Farm, in Hollis, serves a version of Mrs Gardiner's sliced squash and apple pie to her burgeoning family each fall. The recipe, she says, is "easy to adjust to whatever number. Just add more of each ingredient."

One can only wonder if her recipe can be traced to the early days of her more than two-hundred-year-old farm.

Old-Fashioned Squash and Apple Casserole

Ingredients

1 pound winter squash, seeded, peeled, and sliced into 1/2-inch slices
2 firm apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch slices
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a shallow 6- to 8-cup casserole dish.

Beginning with a layer of squash, add layers of squash and apple, finishing with apple, while dividing the brown sugar, butter, salt and pepper between the layers. Dot the top with the butter. Sprinkle the cinnamon over the casserole.

Cover and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until squash and apples are tender. Makes six servings.

Nutritional analysis: per serving 169 calories; 8g fat; 1g protein; 26g carbohydrate; 2g fiber; 21mg cholesterol; 441mg sodium