Squash casserole gets a souffle makeover

In Saving Southern Recipes, Southern Kitchen’s Kate Williams explores the deep heritage of Southern cooking through the lens of passeddown, old family recipes.

I used to despise squash casserole. I’m not really sure what the root of my aversion was — of all the cheese-filled, cracker-topped casseroles out there, this one wasn’t too offensive.

But I can’t really say that I’m cooking my way through classic Southern recipes without making squash casserole. Squash, after all, has been in the Americas since long before Europeans arrived. Evidence of the first domesticated plants were found in Oaxaca and thought to have been grown as far back as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and squash was an important part of Native American agriculture.

I couldn’t find a reliable timeline for when squash casserole made its way into the Southern culinary canon, but if I had to guess, it was a long, slow march from simple cooked squash to the dish with which we’re familiar today. I’d be willing to bet that the first versions were simply mashed vegetables with a little flour, egg and milk to bind. Many casserole recipes today scrap the egg and opt for a looser melange of sliced squash and toppings, while others, most often called “souffles,” contain a high proportion of eggs and milk.

It is this second type that I ultimately decided to make at home. With pureed vegetables and a crisp, buttered breadcrumb topping, it’s definitely fancy. There is, of course, plenty of cheese, but the texture of the casserole is smooth, and there are none of those pesky squash seeds that smush, mush and sog out many a crisp topping.