Pumpkins on parade
Cleopatra never knew about pumpkins, and neither did Genghis Khan, Martin Luther or Geoffrey Chaucer because the squash family, which includes pumpkins, originated in the Western Hemisphere. The rest of the world did not know about them until caravans of European immigrants took over the neighborhood. Shakespeare knew them as pumpions.
Central America is the likely birthplace of pumpkins. Evidence indicates they have been around for 7000 years or more thereby making them among the oldest domesticated vegetables. Originally smaller and bitter, the folks who were here before the invaders noticed pumpkins kept well in winter which made them valuable, plus the seeds were easy to collect.
A pumpkin is a winter squash. The Blue Hubbard gets as big as what we call pumpkins, but it is considered a squash to Americans because American and British speakers reserve the term pumpkin for large round orange, often ribbed, squashes. In Australia, all winter squash are called pumpkins.
A survey of seed catalogs reveals there are pumpkins from Africa, Asia and South America that are blue-gray, warty green and yellow-orange with green splotches. There is a 30-pound white pumpkin of South Africa that looks exactly like our white scalloped summer squash, just larger, yet the little one is a squash and the big one is a pumpkin. Otherwise, size notwithstanding, identical.
There is also a squash called Musquee de Provence which meets all criteria for being a pumpkin – large, ribbed, mostly orange – and it is considered a squash, but let’s not wander into linguistics. They all make tasty pies.
Technically, a pumpkin is a berry in the cucurbita family. Those dang European invaders spread them to every continent except Antarctica, and every local region uses them differently. One province in China is known for pumpkin leaf dishes. Japan has pumpkin tempura and Italy has pumpkin gnocchi.
Everybody makes pumpkin pies. Americans eat 50 million of them at Thanksgiving. One source claimed the idea for pumpkin pie came from early European Americans hollowing out the seeds and filling the pumpkin with milk, herbs and honey or molasses. Nowadays, the pumpkin stuffed into cans for use in Thanksgiving pies probably comes from farmers in Illinois. The predominant variety is a Connecticut Field pumpkin.
And now it is time for a story. Irish legend holds there was a scurrilous character named Stingy Jack who conned the devil into turning himself into a coin to pay for their drinks at an establishment. Jack instead put the coin in his pocket beside a cross thereby holding the devil captive until the devil agreed to leave Jack alone for a year.
In a subsequent encounter, Jack convinced the devil to climb a tree to harvest fruit after which Jack carved a cross on the tree trunk which prevented the devil from getting down until he promised the leave Jack alone for ten years.
Jack eventually died. God would not allow a scurrilous conniver like Jack into heaven, and the devil, still angry about being tricked, would not let Jack into hell. So, it being the middle of the night, the devil gave Jack a glowing ember to light his way. Jack put the ember into a carved-out turnip and wandered off. Legend holds he is still wandering.
So, back in the day, folks in Ireland and Scotland would carve faces into a turnip or beet and put a candle inside to protect against scurrilous wandering spirits. It was called Jack’s lantern. When these same folks moved to our neighborhood, they found pumpkins were excellent candidates for carving Jack’s lantern. So there’s a Halloween pumpkin story on the eve of Thanksgiving.
Another legend points out pumpkins make excellent carriages in a pinch till midnight if you know a fairy godmother. Happy Thanksgiving.