The Curious Incident of the Pumpkin Spice
The blend that changed an entire season
The fall is finally here! It is time to dig out our scarves, hats, gloves, and most importantly, get ourselves a cup of our long-awaited pumpkin spice latte.
But wait a second, how did they manage to squeeze a whole pumpkin in such a little cup?
As it turns out, there is not much pumpkin in our lattes but instead, what we have in our cups is the reflection of a few hundred years of culinary history. You may be surprised to find out that pumpkin spice mix is older than the first American cookbook. The first reference is found in American Cookery (1796), when Amelia Simmons included it in her two recipes for “pompkin” pudding. Her pies were flavored by using some of the most popular spices in the colonies at the time, think nutmeg, ginger, mace, and allspice. Similar mixes appeared later in different cookbooks, but it was not until the middle of the 20th century that pumpkin spice became commercially available.
In the ’50s, a decade in which the concept of convenience started to dominate American households, manufacturing companies like McCormick began selling their signature “pumpkin pie…
