Gracious Gourd! The history of pumpkins and gourds
The history of pumpkin domestication begins with C. pepo. It comes from North America and has been cultivated by indigenous people for thousands of years. The wild parents of C. pepo were similar in many respects to the native African gourds. Tiny, with a very tough skin, bitter and fibrous flesh and few seeds.
In fact, many of the so-called “ornamental gourds” that are still popular with some growers differ little genetically from wild C. pepo. The bitterness is due to the presence of the chemical cucurbitacin, which the plant uses to defend itself against herbivores. Even diminutive amounts can cause stomach ulcers and kill unsuspecting eaters.
Domestication of squash
The long-term domestication of C. pepo has led to the development of two subspecies. The first, C. pepo subsp. pepo, was brought by Columbus upon his return from Hispaniola in 1493 and gave rise to the eight different types of summer squash described earlier.
Second, C. pepo subsp. ovifera, includes a genus of acorn squash that regularly grows in my garden. Dim green, almost black, with deeply ribbed fruit, Table Queen’s favorite variety.
It was bred by the Iowa Seed Company of Des Moines and first sold in the US in 1913. She is featured in “Up-to-date York Vegetables”3 as the same but tastier than that grown by the Arikara tribe of North Dakota, who, as expert gardeners, had no doubt cultivated it for centuries before plant breeders “improved” it.
Introducing….Pumpkins!
Another representative of this subspecies are vivid orange specimens, generally called pumpkins which are a decorative element of Halloween celebrations and a key ingredient of “pumpkin pie”. In the 16th century, there was no systematic way of classifying them, so all cylindrical varieties were called marrow and crooked necks. the round types were called pumpkins, scallops, melons, or acorns.
Pompeons, melons and gourds – oh my God!
Fifty years after the first Up-to-date World pumpkin arrived in Italy, many botanists used both pepo and pepon to describe types of melons that also originated in the Senior World. However, already in the second half of the 16th century melon was also used in English to describe pumpkin!
Courge – which was later anglicized to “zucchini” – was also used by explorers and botanists for the next 200 years to describe squash, pumpkins and bottle gourds. Although botanists already noticed clear differences and characteristics in different groups and types of cucurbits, they stubbornly called all forms of pumpkins pompeons, melons and gourds.
Gourds or Pompeons? Deciding on a name
Gourds or Pompeons? Deciding on a nameEven Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) believed that all gourds and pumpkins belonged to the genus Cucurbita. Only after Linnaeus’ death did the botanist Juan Ignacio Molina (1740–1829) assign the poles their own genus, Lagenaria. American botanist Edward Lewis Sturtevant (1842–1898)4 suggests that the different shapes of summer and winter squash led to confusion in their nomenclature.
Immense, round ones were called pompeons; those with tough skin kept for the winter were known as gourds, and the diminutive round ones as melons. One of the easiest ways to tell a gourd from a pumpkin is that the former has white flowers and the latter has yellow flowers, but it took over 200 years for the penny to disappear. All four Up-to-date World pumpkins also have an easily identifiable and distinct appearance.*
The rise of the pumpkin
After a leisurely start – like many vegetables at the time, considered fit only for the destitute – pumpkin has become a popular dish in the European diet. In the slow 16th century, the British lumped together all the species of gigantic, hard-skinned pumpkins that had been imported from the American colonies and called them “pompeons.”
They grew well in the English climate and soon the name changed to pumpkin. A popular dish was combining the sweet pulp with dried fruits, apples and spices, and then baking it into a dough. Thus was born what would become an icon of colonial American cuisine: pumpkin pie.
Early uses of pumpkins
Early uses of pumpkinsThis love affair with hard-skinned varieties of C. pepo and other hard-skinned species, mainly C. maxima (which the Algonquin grow), coincided with the colonization of North America. Their great value in the USA in the 17th century was animal feed, and in extreme cases also for human consumption.
The first colonizers didn’t have ovens, so they cut the top off the pumpkin, removed the seeds, and filled the cavity with a mixture of milk, spices, and something sweet like honey. After replacing the upper part the stuffed vegetables were thrown into the ashes of the fire to slowly roast.
The result was a bulky creamy custard, reminiscent of the filling of today’s pumpkin pie. The pulp was also used to make a type of bread or cake and fermented to produce beer. As Europeans moved west, they were able to trade and grow pumpkins, which formed the basis of much of Native American culinary culture.