The Native North Americans introduced early European settlers to the pumpkin. When half the Pilgrims died during their first arduous winter in the New World, the Patuxet Squanto showed the survivors how to reap an abundance of food by planting prolific pumpkin vines among corn, using herring as fertilizer. In October the Pilgrims had cause for their first big celebration, and the pumpkin was featured as part of the feast. It was probably boiled, although before long the settlers learned to make a simple pumpkin pie by removing the top, scooping out seeds and fibers, filling the cavity with milk, and roasting the pumpkin whole until the milk was absorbed.
The year offered no occasion for renewed celebration — the harvest was poor and the supply ships brought few provisions. To avert starvation, Governor William Bradford ordered the Pilgrims to grow more pumpkins. Apparently, the plan worked: In the settlers held their second celebration.
The Perfect Pumpkin: Growing/Cooking/Carving
Pumpkins keep well in storage to provide sustenance throughout winter, adding to their importance as an early staple. Pioneers traveling westward carried along their pumpkin seeds, a practice attested to by the once common phrase, As fat as a prairie pumpkin. In tough times, pumpkin meat could be made into a substitute for such hard-to-get staples as flour, molasses, and sugar.
The pumpkin was so ubiquitous at the family table that a circuit-riding preacher once prayed, Dear Lord, give me just one good meal without pumpkin. Through selective breeding over the years, the stringy, watery, bland fruits of earlier times evolved into pumpkins with sweet, thick, smooth-textured meat. Pumpkins remained an important staple until after World War II, when refrigeration supplanted root cellars as a way to preserve out-of-season foods. Instead of a necessity of life, the pumpkin then became a symbol of bounty — something to be displayed on the front porch or carved for the amusement of children.
As families moved away from the country into suburban homes, many found their backyards too small to accommodate sprawling pumpkin vines. Those who continued enjoying pumpkins were less likely to grow their own than to buy them seasonally at grocery stores and roadside stands. The pumpkins they bought, grown in fields measured by the acre, were not developed for their superior culinary properties, but instead for superior marketing qualities: hard shells and tough stems, flat roll-resistant bottoms, facelike symmetry, and a size that offered plenty of room for creative carving.
Perfection, in this case, involves not only symmetry but also size. Intrigued by the possibilities, growers of giant pumpkins now engage in friendly but intense international competition. Rather than planting pumpkins by the field, competitive growers put in only one, or perhaps a few, pampered plants. For all these reasons, pumpkins are more popular today than ever before, with new varieties introduced each year.
If I want to cook, I select a sweet, meaty pie pumpkin. The two are worlds apart. Life was simpler back when I was growing up. Today pumpkins come in a broader assortment, ranging from apple-sized miniatures, through globes of innumerable sizes, shapes, colors, and uses, and on up to gigantic record breakers that, to be moved, require a good half-dozen stout men. How can they all be pumpkins? Determining what is, or is not, a pumpkin is a constant and hotly contested debate among pumpkin devotees. Earlier in this century, a bunch of botanists thought they had settled the debate by defining a pumpkin as any fruit of the genus Cucurbita with a hard, ridged stem — in contrast to a squash, which by their definition has a soft, round stem.
But that definition turned out to include several squash varieties that no one would consider calling pumpkins, so it was back to the drawing board. Competitive vegetable growers stir the murky waters with their oversized, orange-shelled, meaty squashes, which they call giant pumpkins. The word pumpkin derives from pompion or pumpion which appeared in early English and North American writings.
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Both are variations on the Old French word pompon , which in turn came from the Latin pepo , which came from the Greek pepon , meaning ripened in the sun. At one time, pompion referred to all winter squash, including the pumpkin. Along the way, the diminutive suffix -kin was incorporated, and pompion became pompkin and later, pumpkin. During colonial times, the word attached itself specifically to the round, orange squash that today remains the autumn symbol of abundant harvest.
So what is a pumpkin? No one disputes the fact that a pumpkin is not actually a vegetable but a fruit, and a berry at that. Unlike other berries, however, the pumpkin has a hard outer shell. Nor does anyone dispute the fact that pumpkins belong to the family Cucurbitaceae, consisting of 90 genera and species of tender, heat-loving plants with tendril-bearing vines and alternate leaves.
This family includes all cucumbers, melons, squash, and gourds. The controversy starts, however, when you get down to species.
Of the six Cucurbita species, so-called pumpkins fall under four: C. In attempting to describe the relationships among these four species, Glenn Drowns of Calamus, Iowa, explains that the big orange thing everyone readily recognizes as a traditional pumpkin is a pepo. Pepos prefer northern climates that are frost-free from late April through early October, but lack early-summer heat. A pumpkin of the pepo species has a hard, woody, ridged stem, and most have orange shells. Nonpumpkin pepos include acorn squash, spaghetti squash, summer squash, and hard-shelled gourds.
They looked for something similar that would grow, and they called that a pumpkin. In the South, the closest thing to a pepo that can withstand the insects running rampant in hot, humid weather is C. This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue? Upload Sign In Join. Save For Later. Create a List. Summary The big orange pumpkin is no longer just for Halloween!
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