It’s time to set the record straight.
By Kimberly Holland October 11, 2021
In a 2016 story titled “I Just Found Out Canned Pumpkin Isn’t Pumpkin At All, And My Whole Life is Basically a Lie,” a writer with our sister publication MyRecipes spelled out how she believed canned pumpkin was actually squash, not pumpkin. The story, which also appeared on allrecipes.com, spread like wildfire, igniting outraged cooks in all corners of the country — for good reason. We’ve all believed our precious cans of pumpkin puree come from magical fields of orange gourds that bask in the sun until they’re ripe for the picking.
But there’s just one problem with that story: It is not exactly true.
Most canned pumpkin in the U.S. is made from a type of pumpkin that doesn’t look all that typical. Dickinson pumpkins, also known as Dickinson squash, are the pumpkins used to make the majority of canned pumpkin we eat today. But Dickinson pumpkins are tan pumpkins with uniform, smooth skin that are much larger than the average field pumpkin. They’re also sometimes called squash, not pumpkins. Read more HERE.