If you are going to carve a scary face into a bright orange pumpkin, the first thing you need is a bright orange pumpkin. And the prevalence of this autumn icon is a story a long time in the making.
"It’s got such an old history that goes back pre-colonial for thousands of generations," said chef Sean Sherman, founder of The Sioux Chef and Culinary Director for the Indigenous Food Lab.
Cucurbita pepo — the species that includes what we today distinguish as pumpkins, squash and zucchini — was first domesticated in present-day Mexico, and then spread throughout North America.
"There were so many groups across North America, from Mexico through Alaska. And within each of these regions where there was agriculture, people had innovated and grown all sorts of varietals of squash," said Sherman. "And those particular pieces are celebrated for generations."
Including here in this area. And when European colonists arrived in present-day New England in the 1600s, they too turned to squash and pumpkins.
"The colonists ate pumpkins of all sorts," said University of Delaware professor Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of An American Icon. "It’s prolific. It grows like a weed. It stores. It sustains them."
But in the 1800s, the Connecticut field pumpkin was separated from the C. pepo pack, so to speak.
"More people are moving into cities. The squash kind of goes into these European markets, but the pumpkin — like the big, round, orange Connecticut field pumpkin — that one stays behind on the farm," said Ott.
It stayed behind because, unlike a number of its relatives, it didn’t sell well as a food at market. It was grown mainly for animal fodder on small, rural farms. But it did look great. And even back in the 19th century, it turns out there was a market for nostalgia here in America.
"It's a cultural story that the orange field pumpkin became the pumpkin," said Ott. "It was a part of that old-fashioned way of making a living off the land. In America, we inculcate great values in that, you know, these agrarian ideals and a carrier of these deep meanings. And so it becomes popular to Americans ... because the deep stories that they invested in it."