It’s also very close to the New England Pie pumpkin, also called the Sugar Pie pumpkin, which you can probably determine is the one you’ll find in pumpkin pies. With its uniform shape, the Connecticut Field pumpkin is ideal for pumpkin carving and decoration. It’s the Connecticut Field pumpkin, named after the state where it was cultivated, and it is not far off from a kind of squash grown by Native Americans long before Europeans arrived in the Americas. The most classic kind of pumpkin, however, is indeed North American. Through cultural contact, gourds eventually became used in almost every culture in the entire world. There are also species of gourd that were found to have been originally cultivated in Asia and Africa even earlier, though there is some disagreement as to which continent gourds first appeared on. In fact, gourds may have been one of the very first domesticated crops, having been grown before maize and beans. Gourds go back even further in time, having been traced to Peru in about 11,000 BCE. Most varieties of pumpkin are believed to be from North America, with evidence of their existence in Mexico going back to at least 5,500 BCE. And in some places including Australia, “pumpkin” can refer to any winter squash at all, thus making it interchangeable. Thus began an arbitrary division between pumpkins and the rest of the gourds, for aesthetic reasons alone. The word “pumpkin” itself comes from the Greek pepon, meaning “large melon.” The word traveled through French ( popon ) to England, where it became pumpion before the name pumpkin finally arose in the American colonies. To add another layer, some people also use “gourds” to refer to inedible varieties of squash, and the edible ones are “squash.” So yes: confusing. And all gourds and pumpkins are technically types of squash (specifically winter squash), and though there are certainly some varieties of squash more likely to be pumpkins, the boundaries of the definition are loose.

If it’s a round, orange gourd-like thing, it’s probably called a pumpkin in North America. And pumpkins - also a fruit - are even trickier.īasically, there’s no botanical agreement on what a pumpkin is exactly. A tomato is a fruit, for example, even though that bristles against our instincts. I know, I know, you probably know what a pumpkin is, but the classification of fruits and vegetables is notoriously tricky. Pumpkins are not as basic as they appear. The history of pumpkins and gourds stretches back to early human history.

But there is a lot of culture packed into these crops. Plus, you can place them around your home without worrying that they’re going to rot within a week. The orange color evokes the season perfectly. It seems pretty self-evident as to why the pumpkin became the quintessential fall decoration. Nothing, however, can compete with the sheer concentrated autumn spirit of the pumpkin, along with its friend the gourd. It’s the time for apple-picking and corncob-eating, and for the leaves on all the (deciduous) trees to explode in color. Toss the raw squash with the sugar and bake it for a few minutes on each side in an oven on high, until crispy.Fall is harvest season in the northern hemisphere, and so naturally, fresh fruits and vegetables pop up from the ground and into our stores. Break down half a cup of sugar in a blender until it’s super-fine. Cohen uses squash all year round, and says “there’s a squash for every mood.” She explains, “One thing that’s super easy for home cooks is to smoke thinly sliced squash and crumble it over salads, or use it in sandwiches to add texture and deep, rich, lush flavour.” To prepare it squash ‘bacon’: Thinly slice a couple cups of peeled butternut squash, so it’s the size and shape of strips of uncooked bacon, and smoke it twice. Just ask Amanda Cohen, chef and owner of NYC’s vegetarian paradise Dirt Candy. The flesh is perfect for using like traditional pumpkin in pies and breads – or even as a bacon substitute.

It originates in the Yucatan, where the leaves and stems are also served as vegetables. This white-and-grey-streaked gourd looks like an elongated butternut squash with a collapsed neck. AKA Japanese pie pumpkin, or the silver seed gourd.

Gord pumpkin