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Weird History Food is getting you Fall-ready with the History of Pumpkin Spice. Now, seemingly everywhere, Pumpkin Spice has a surprisingly long history. Pumpkin spice—also known as pumpkin pie spice—is typically made from a combination of Southeast Asian spices: ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and sometimes ginger. But how did Pumpkin Spice become an option in about every food or drink during the fall season? Get your latte or SPAM ready and find out.
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In the two decades since the pumpkin spice latte first
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appeared at Starbucks, every company the nation over has tried to cash in on the flavor's success
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from the sober and intelligent pumpkin spice Twinkies to the deranged and chaotic pumpkin spice spam
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But where did pumpkin spice come from? How did it get so popular? And what exactly is pumpkin spice
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Today on Weird History Food, we're scooping out the history of pumpkin spice
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All right, slide into those Ugg boots, and let's get fallen. Pumpkin spice, also known as pumpkin pie spice
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is typically made from a combination of Southeast Asian ingredients, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and sometimes ginger
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Allspice is occasionally thrown into the mix too, but that comes from Central Mexico and the Caribbean
0:56
and it enters our story a bit later. But kind of like how beard oil isn't made by grinding up beards
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there is no actual pumpkin in pumpkin spice. Instead, pumpkin spice is meant to be paired with pumpkin, or with whatever
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Pringles, maybe. Eh, maybe not. How did this come to be? Well, way back in the 1400s, Europeans were sick of their native spices
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Rosemary, parsley, sage, and thyme were no longer cutting it. Sorry, Simon and Garfunkel
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Sure, they'd imported cinnamon and ginger from Arab and Asian traders as far back as Roman times
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But when the Ottoman Empire seized control of Constantinople in 1453, their Silk Road ties to Eastern spices were severed
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So European traders and explorers took to the sea themselves, launching the Age of Exploration as fortune seekers across the continent
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looked for large spice halls around the globe. Among their primary destinations were the Banda Islands
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believed at the time to be the only place on Earth that grew nutmeg
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Back in Europe, just one pound of nutmeg was worth seven whole oxen
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We were using ox-based currency back then. For comparison, that's more oxen than you could get for a comparable amount of gold
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Yeah, but how much is that in doge? So traders flocked to the Banda Islands en masse
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and they picked up other spices in the surrounding regions along the way. Because of the effort required for Europeans to reach Indonesia and Sri Lanka
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cinnamon, cloves, and ginger became high-end commodities too. All four ingredients were typically reserved for special occasions within Europe
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primarily used on feast days, such as Christmas and Twelfth Night, which is the celebration in which everyone gets together to watch the Amanda Bynes film
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She's the Man. It likewise didn't take long for these hot climate flavors to become synonymous with Europe's cold season
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Over time, trade routes expanded, and many European nations began to colonize the areas with the best spices
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driving their prices down and making them more accessible for everyday Europeans
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Still, no medieval Europeans had even so much as heard of a pumpkin before
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Jack Skellington wept. It wouldn't be until the exploration of an entirely new continent
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that the term pumpkin came into the English lexicon And it would take the colonization of that continent to establish pumpkin spice as the specific flavor combo it is today
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Asian spices remained a valuable commodity to the Europeans for centuries to come
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The Dutch even traded New Amsterdam to Britain for one of the Banda Islands in 1674
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an exchange that saw New Amsterdam renamed to New York. And that guaranteed a They Might Be Giants shout out over three centuries later
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As the Asian holiday spice combo became more available to European consumers
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it just needed an identifying flavor to give it a less clunky name
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Foods should take as few syllables as possible to order. Enter the pumpkin
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Pumpkins are a type of warm weather winter squash that originated in what is now the southern United States and northeastern parts of Mexico
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Its name derived from the Greek word for a large melon. pepon, which eventually made it into British English as pompon, which kind of sounds like
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a British guy asking if you need any gas. Native Americans were cultivating pumpkins as early as
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3500 BC, making it one of the oldest known farmed crops in the Western Hemisphere. The first
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Europeans to reach North America were likewise introduced to this vine fruit upon reaching the
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New World. And it wasn't long before they brought the first pumpkins back with them to Europe
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For instance, as early as 1515, less than 25 years after Columbus first landed in the Americas
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Renaissance painter Raphael Sancio was putting North American gourds on the ceiling of the Villa
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Farnsenia in Rome. They were so hyped about pumpkins, they were putting them in frescoes
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It's believed that the Mayflower Pilgrims may have eaten pumpkin at the first Thanksgiving
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securing its place as an American fall flavor for centuries to come. As time wore on
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and previously rare spices were increasingly cultivated in new locations across the globe
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their value dropped, and they became affordable for the average person, which encouraged people to experiment
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In Britain, this meant mixing cinnamon and nutmeg into blood puddings and meaty mince pies
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In America, this meant mixing it with pumpkin. There's just something about a pumpkin
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It demands your attention and your spices. Amelia Simmons' 1796 cookbook, American Cookery
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the first known cookbook to be written and published by an American, features several recipes that today are synonymous with the American holiday season
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These include the first ever documented suggestion to pair turkey with cranberry
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and the first ever recipes for spiced pumpkin pie. It also contains the first known pairing of fried chicken and televised professional wrestling
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but that recipe gets far less attention. In one of these pumpkin pie recipes, she suggests mixing pumpkin with ginger and nutmeg
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In another, she suggests using ginger and allspice. It didn't take long for bakers across America to take up Simmons' recipes and make them their own
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And by the end of the following century, many cookbooks began referring to the combination of nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and clove simply as pumpkin pie spice
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Still it wasn until a half century later in 1934 that McCormick and Company released the first ever premixed version of pumpkin pie spice The world would never be the same
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While Pumpkin Pie Spice lived out the next 70 years as a useful addition to any holiday
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dessert, it wasn't until 2003 that a handful of mad scientists gave it a life all its own
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Legend has it that a small group met in the ultra-secret Liquid Lab, located on the seventh
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floor of Starbucks headquarters, presumably in the presence of several armed guards
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Since the previous season's peppermint mocha was a hit for the company, Starbucks directed
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Peter Dukes, the then product manager of Espresso, to get with his team and bolster their beverage
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lineup for the upcoming holidays. According to Dukes, they brewed 100 different ideas for the job, and after running about
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10 of them by a consumer group for market viability, they had nearly settled on a much
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more boring flavor like chocolate or caramel. But on one fateful day, the team brought actual pumpkin pies into the lab and drenched them in loads of espresso
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This is normally grounds for a fistfight. But the team ate the espresso-soaked pies instead, and their lives changed in an instant
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All of that consumer group testing for a chocolate or caramel drink went out the window
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as the team dropped all other ideas to focus on creating the perfect pumpkin pie-inspired beverage
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To do so, they developed a sauce that could be mixed into Starbucks' existing lattes
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and they topped it off with whipped cream and all of the standard pumpkin pie spice ingredients
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Years later, the recipe would also come to include actual pumpkin puree, presumably to thwart pedantic trivia nerds
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Yes, we know there's no pumpkin in pumpkin spice. As it was first getting off the ground, they nearly named the drink the Fall Harvest Latte
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but they opted for the slightly less obnoxious pumpkin spice just before the drink's release
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And when it hit limited stores in October of 2003, it was an immediate success
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It wasn't long before it got a national release. With the rise of social media, it soon became a ubiquitous part of Starbucks' fall lineup
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Today, Dukes is Starbucks' Director of Store Development Market Strategy, which we assume is dense corporate speak for Keeper of the Spice
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But his team's creation has gone on to direct the entire fall season
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In the two decades since its initial release, Starbucks has sold over 200 million pumpkin spice drinks
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which now include not only lattes, but cold brews and chai teas as well
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What's more, pumpkin spice lovers can enjoy Starbucks' signature flavor at home
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with both bags of pre-ground pumpkin spice coffee beans, along with K-cups and pre-made cold brews
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You never have to taste anything else if you don't want to. As any successful artist can tell you, once you make it big, everyone's going to want a piece of the pie
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As other companies saw Starbucks' success, nearly everyone has tried to cash in on the pumpkin spice craze that swept the nation
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Among the more popular products are pre desserts and dessert mixes including pumpkin spice Oreos Hostess Iced Pumpkin Cupcakes and pumpkin spice cookie dough from both Toll House and Pillsbury These are all net goods which you can tell by each product ability to be dunked in pumpkin spice lattes Speaking of which Dunkin Coffee Mate and International Delight all also have their very own pumpkin spiced flavor coffee creamers
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And Jet Puffed makes pumpkin spice marshmallows if you're looking for that extra kick to your morning beverage
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Or if you just want to make some truly ' s'mores. And if that's not pumpkin-y enough to start your morning
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you can pair your pumpkin spice coffee with pumpkin spice Cheerios or frosted mini-wheats
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one of Thomas' pumpkin spice bagels, English muffins, or swirl breads, or even indulge in a whopping spoonful of Philadelphia's pumpkin spice cream cheese spread
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If you spread that on a pumpkin spice bagel, the Starbucks mermaid appears and gives you the key to the city
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On the savory end of things, companies have also put out pumpkin spice Pringles
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pumpkin spice hummus, pumpkin spice chicken sausage, and even a pumpkin spice latte burger
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That sounds like a recipe for a pumpkin spice stomachache, but fortune and flavor favors the bold
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You can't even joke about pumpkin spice unless you're prepared to back it up
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Hormel Foods learned that the hard way back in 2017 when the brand jokingly shared a photo of pumpkin spice spam
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a totally fake product meant to playfully fool the public. But the public's response was shockingly positive
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And just two years later, Hormel Foods put out an all-too-real limited-edition pumpkin spice spam
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Every last can was sold in just seven hours. It was the most excited anyone has ever been about eating spam
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Still, for those of us whose appetites can't be satiated by food and drink alone
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there's always pumpkin spice deodorant, pumpkin spice toothpaste, and even pumpkin spice cough drops
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for people who like to eat personal hygiene products. Eh, maybe you can have too much of a good thing
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Like with any fad, for every person who loves a good pumpkin spice Swiss Miss Coco
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there is a whole horde of people who love to hate that person. And we get it
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It's kind of annoying when a trend gets so popular you can't seem to avoid it no matter where you look
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Wait, pumpkin spice cup noodles? But regardless of what any haters may think
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the reason you see pumpkin spice everywhere is because most of us love it
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The United States alone spends over a half a billion dollars every year on pumpkin spice-flavored products
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Some scientists have chalked this love affair up to nostalgia. People develop warm emotions towards the holiday seasons
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and they therefore give outsized attention to anything that brings back good memories, especially scents or flavors
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Have you ever had a smell instantly take you back to a memory from seven years ago
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Pumpkin spice scratches that same edge. Others write it off as a recession-era comfort
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While Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte first came out in 2003, it didn't truly become the
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cultural behemoth it is today until 2008, when we were all chucking caffeine and waiting
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for the big short to finally come out and explain what the hell just happened. Either way, everyone seems to agree on one thing
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Pumpkin Spice's success relies on its limited release window. Without it, it would just become another year-round flavor, like chocolate or caramel
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And it might lose its allure to fall fanatics everywhere. which would be a shame
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We're really looking forward to trying those cup noodles
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