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Te Ao Hou, September 1955, Page 62

The best way to cook the pumpkin is to bake it in its skin in the oven. Remove the seeds and cut it into suitable pieces. Sprinkle salt on the flesh and put a little fat or butter in the hollows. Place the pumpkin in the oven on an over slide at the same time as the potatoes are put in. The cored apples, stuffed with sugar, dates or raisins, and with a small dab of butter on each, should have had thin cuts made through the skin right round their middles. This should stop them from “bursting” when they are cooking. They should stand in a very small amount of of water in a cake tin or an overproof glass dish. These go in the oven when the potatoes do but the oven should be heated up a little to about 400°F and the apples put about 2/3rd of the way up the oven. The meat and vegetables are put on lower shelves, the meat at the lowest level. If custard is to be served with the baked apples allow 1 egg and 2 teaspoons of sugar to each ½ pint of milk. A drop or two of vanilla essence can be used to flavour the cooled cooked custard. Heat the milk in a double boiler (or in a small saucepan standing in hot water in a slightly larger saucepan). Beat the egg and sugar lightly and pour the hot milk on to the egg mixture. Stir well. Pour the mixture back into the small saucepan and cook the custard over hot water until it thickens. Stir the custard while it is cooking and be careful not to overcook and so curdle it. After making the custard the green vegetable can be washed and cut up. Place it in a small amount of boiling salted water and cook it quickly for 10 to 15 minutes. Heat the dinner plates and serving dishes, set the table, and begin to dish up the dinner. Keep the meat and vegetables warm in the oven or on a rack while making the gravy. Save the vegetable cooking water. To make gravy, drain off most of the fat from the roasting pan leaving about two tablespoons of melted fat. Sprinkle two tablespoons of flour into the pan and blend it well with the fat. Heat it gently and pour in the vegetable juice and more hot water if it is needed. Stir the gravy while it is thickening, and add more salt if it is required. Thus should be cooked a roast dinner.