Pumpkin delights are a popular fall treat consisting of pumpkin flavored desserts like pies, breads, cookies, cakes, ice creams, and more. Many people look forward to indulging in pumpkin delights during the autumn months. But when exactly did pumpkin flavored desserts become so popular? Let’s take a look at the history of pumpkin delights to find out when they first came out.
The History of Pumpkins
To understand when pumpkin delights were first created, we need to go back to the origins of pumpkins themselves. Pumpkins are a cultivar of winter squash that originated in North America. The oldest evidence archeologists have found of pumpkins dates back about 7,500 to 5,000 B.C.E. in Mexico. Pumpkins were an important part of Native American diets and cuisine. Native Americans grew pumpkins along with the “Three Sisters” crops of corn, beans, and squash. They used pumpkins as a staple food source and found creative ways to incorporate them into their cooking.
When European colonists arrived in North America in the 16th and 17th centuries, Native Americans introduced them to pumpkins. The colonists were unfamiliar with this orange gourd fruit, but they quickly found ways to include pumpkins in their diets. As pumpkins became more widely grown across North America and Europe, people experimented more with cooking pumpkins in both savory and sweet dishes.
Early Sweet Pumpkin Recipes
Some of the earliest sweet pumpkin recipes can be traced back to Medieval Europe. Pumpkins, often referred to as “pompions” at the time, were sometimes baked with honey, spices, and milk. This was likely one of the first prototypical “pumpkin pies.” In 1670, an English manual on housekeeping called The Queen-Like Closet included a recipe for “Pompion Pudding” made by mixing stewed, spiced pumpkin with milk, eggs, butter and sack wine.
In the American colonies, pumpkin pudding recipes were also recorded in the 17th century. These early puddings would be made by mixing mashed pumpkin with milk and spices and baking it in a crust. The first published American cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons in 1796, contained two pumpkin pudding recipes. One was made with a flaky pastry crust and one was made without a crust and baked in a dish like a custard.
So some of the first pumpkin delicacies on record were puddings, custards and sweet pies. But when did the now classic pumpkin pie become popularized?
The Rise of Pumpkin Pie Popularity
Pumpkin pies started gaining widespread popularity in America in the early 1800s. Pumpkin pie recipes began frequently appearing in cookbooks in the 1830s and 1840s. The first known pumpkin pie recipe using milk, eggs, and a pastry crust was published under the name “pumpkin pudding-pie” in Lydia Maria Child’s 1833 cookbook The American Frugal Housewife. This established the classic combination of ingredients for pumpkin pie that we still use today.
In the 1850s, the adoption of the canning process allowed pumpkin puree to be canned and preserved much more effectively. Canned pumpkin puree became widely available in stores across America. This made baking pumpkin pies faster and easier since the cook no longer had to prepare fresh pumpkin puree from scratch. The availability of canned pumpkin helped pumpkin pies rise in popularity and become a staple dessert during the fall and holiday season.
By the late 1800s, pumpkin pie was being touted as an quintessential American dish. Cookbooks and newspapers presented pumpkin pie as a tradition at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Libby’s, the company still famous for canned pumpkin, began selling canned pumpkin purée across America in the 1920s. Their advertising campaigns helped further cement pumpkin pie as a traditional American dessert.
So while prototypical pumpkin puddings and custards existed in prior centuries, the classic version of pumpkin pie recognizable today came about in America in the early to mid-19th century. The increased accessibility of canned pumpkin accelerated the dessert’s popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Other Classic Pumpkin Desserts
While pumpkin pie may be the most iconic, other classic pumpkin desserts developed over the 19th and 20th centuries as well.
Pumpkin Bread
Pumpkin bread is a quick bread that incorporates pumpkin puree and warm spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Pumpkin bread likely descended from colonial era “plum cakes” or “pound cakes” that used local squash in place of costly ingredients like eggs and refined sugar.
The first published recipe for pumpkin bread appeared in 1929 in Pearl Wenig’s cookbook For Men Only. Pumpkin bread recipes grew more common from the 1930s to 1960s and appeared in cookbooks like the 1943 edition of Fannie Farmer and Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking.
Pumpkin Cookies
Cookies containing pumpkin first started showing up in American cookbooks in the early 20th century. For example, the 1918 edition of The Settlement Cook Book contained a recipe for maple pumpkin cookies made with mashed pumpkin, maple sugar, and flour.
Pumpkin cookies grew more popular in the 1940s onward with recipes like pumpkin spice cookies, pumpkin oatmeal cookies, and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Libby’s pumpkin company published an advertisement for “Pumpkin Spice Cookies” in 1959, showing the dessert’s mid-century appeal.
Pumpkin Roll Cake
Pumpkin roll cakes or “pumpkin logs” are spiced pumpkin-flavored sponge cakes rolled up around a cream cheese filling. This unique pumpkin dessert was invented in the 1950s.
The first mention of a pumpkin roll cake appeared in the 1950 Knoxville, Iowa community cookbook. The recipe called for cooking canned pumpkin with eggs and flour to make a basic sponge cake, then rolling it up with powdered sugar sprinkled inside.
In the 1960s and 70s, pumpkin roll cakes gained wider popularity. Recipes were published using ingredients like brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts in the cake recipe. Cream cheese frosting or filling was also incorporated. Libby’s pumpkin company released a well-known recipe for “Pumpkin Chiffon Roll” in 1975 that helped popularize the dessert.
Pumpkin Spice Latte
While pumpkin desserts have a long history, one modern pumpkin delight was invented much more recently. The pumpkin spice latte, or PSL, was created by Starbucks in 2003. It combines espresso and steamed milk with pumpkin pie spices and pumpkin flavoring.
The PSL was invented by Peter Dukes, a manager at Starbucks headquarters who was tasked with creating a new seasonal drink that would transition from summer to fall. The pumpkin spice latte was rolled out across all Starbucks locations later that year and instantly became popular. It remains a seasonal staple drink that many coffee lovers look forward to every fall.
The Evolution of Pumpkin Delights
While Native Americans were cooking with pumpkin for centuries, sweet desserts incorporating pumpkin did not become widespread until colonial America. The earliest pumpkin puddings and pies emerged in the 17th century. In the 19th century, pumpkin pie recipes evolved into their classic form we still enjoy today.
Canned pumpkin puree paved the way for pumpkin pies, along with other desserts like breads and cookies, to become popular nationwide in the early 20th century. Innovations like pumpkin roll cakes were dreamed up in the mid-1900s. The flavor combination of pumpkin and warming spices has continued to be adapted into new desserts and drinks like the PSL up to the present day.
So pumpkin delights were first dreamed up centuries ago, but they became a staple in America during the 1800s and early 1900s. Today the popularity of pumpkin flavors shows no signs of slowing down. We can look forward to seeing what new pumpkin-inspired creations emerge in the future!
Conclusion
In conclusion, while pumpkins themselves have existed for thousands of years, sweet pumpkin desserts emerged much more recently. Early pudding and pie recipes using pumpkins appeared in the 1600s and 1700s. But the classic version of pumpkin pie recognizable today came about in early 19th century America, aided by the popularization of canned pumpkin in the 1920s.
Other beloved pumpkin desserts like breads, cookies, and cakes were created between the late 1800s and mid-1900s. Innovations like pumpkin roll cake and the pumpkin spice latte expanded pumpkin’s popularity right up to the 21st century. So next time you enjoy a pumpkin delight, you can reflect on the fascinating history that shaped it into the treat it is today!