Pumpkin Soup
A Delicious Guide to the History of Pumpkin Soup
Pumpkins, which are indigenous to the western hemisphere, have been grown in the Americas for about five thousand years. Pumpkins were then introduced to Europe but they remain far more common today in the United States than in the United Kingdom and some other countries. There are many types of pumpkin available today, ranging from the small sugar pumpkins to the huge jack-o-lantern types.
Pumpkins were seen as something of a curiosity when they were introduced from South and Central America in the sixteenth century. They often featured in nursery rhymes like "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater" and fairy tales like "Cinderella."
One reason why pumpkins have stood the test of time and clung on to their popularity is that they are a very versatile kind of food. You can use them in curries, soup, and casseroles. You can make cookies; bread and scones with them and you can also use pumpkins to make risotto, dips, burgers, quiche, salad, pancakes, smoothies, salads, cornbread and much more.
Pumpkins are sweet and moist and they can be used in both savory and sweet recipes. Pumpkins can be used to thicken a stew or soup. As long as you have a good quality, heavy chef's knife, you can prepare pumpkins.
How Pumpkins Got Their Name
The word pumpkin comes from the Greek word "pepon," which means big melon. They got this name in 1584 when Jacques Cartier, the French explorer, reported finding big melons growing in the St Lawrence region. This word was changed to "pompon" by the French and the English changed it to "Pumpion."
Colonists in America changed the word to "pumpkin." Pumpkins come in many colors, including yellow, orange, green, and even dark gray.
Pumpkins and British Colonists
Pumpkins have been popular for a long time in the United States and the port of Boston used to be known as Pumpkinshire because the British colonists ate so much of the fruit there! The colonists used the pumpkin to make dishes like pumpkin pie and even pumpkin beer for their thanksgiving festivities.
France imported a lot of pumpkins during the Revolutionary War. Pumpkin is quite popular in France, much more so than in the United Kingdom, where it is not used in many recipes. Pumpkin soup recipes were common in convents, schools, and hospitals in rural France in the late eighteenth century. It was also well loved in the United States at that time.
How Pumpkin Soup Recipes Have Changed
A modern pumpkin soup recipe is similar to the pumpkin soup made in the past but, as with many other kinds of recipes, pumpkin soup has change through time, depending on the other ingredients we have available today.
There were spiced pumpkin soups, vegetable rich pumpkin soups with potatoes, carrots and more and creamy pumpkin soups many years ago but our ancestors did not have our advanced cooking methods, cooking equipment or accessories like our pumpkin design soup tureen sets.
Many old recipes for pumpkin soup would have been a combination of vegetables in a homemade beef or chicken broth. A pinch of sugar gives sweetness and fresh herbs would also have been used in many old-fashioned pumpkin soup recipes as well as spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.
Today there are plenty of recipes for creamy pumpkin soups. You might like to make a canned pumpkin soup recipe or stick to a well-loved classic pumpkin soup but rest assured there are pumpkin soup recipes for everybody and we seem to love pumpkins and pumpkin soup as much as our ancestors did.
