What’s the deal with pumpkin spice? I’ve seen a few memes about it. But online all I can find is that it’s some kind of beverage.
An American thing. Apparently it is actually pumpkin seed flavoured. They rarely eat pumpkin, calling it “squash”, and renaming squash to something else (summer squash or something?) Anyhow, they can traditionally only get the flavouring at one time of the year, their relevant harvest festival, and so scarcity breeds obsession.
It is even more bizarre from the viewpoint of the southern hemisphere, where spring has sprung, and our delicious pumpkins are available year round anyhow.
They rarely eat pumpkin, calling it “squash”, and renaming squash to something else (summer squash or something?)
Admittedly, I and probably 70% of other Americans were formerly unaware that pumpkins are a variety of squash, making this paragraph surprisingly difficult for me to even parse. So that was an interesting and kind of fun experience.
If it helps, I have come to realize after thinking about it that I see any roundish variety, regardless of smoothness or color, as a pumpkin, regardless of its actual name. If it’s gourd-shaped (butternut/zucchini), it’s a squash.
The flavor is seasonal and therefore novel, you’re right about that. But tbf, indian food uses squash in general, which seems to extend to white/orange pumpkins, and we definitely have Indian-Americans. Ditto Hispanic. It is eaten more often, just not by white people.
For the useless naming difference, as always, any beef with America can more factually be blamed on the Europeans. Specifically, the French.
Like Margot said, it’s the spices used for pumpkin pie. There’s a relative flavor you see sometimes that’s full pumpkin pie flavor, which I prefer. It’s more well rounded. Pumpkin spice has, over the last decade probably, fully taken over fall drink flavors. It started with Starbucks lattes, spread to other cafés. Now it’s in everything. It has fully taken over the fall beer flavors I think, overtaking Oktoberfest styles.
Many years ago, Starbucks introduced the Pumpkin Spice Latte in the US. It became a weird cultural phenomenon. Every year there is a release day, when it’s made available for the season. It was a huge thing on social media. Other companies started adding Pumpkin Spice to their things (from cookies, breakfast cereals, beer, etc).
It’s become a joke at this point, though lots of things still have Pumpkin Spice versions.
