IN RECENT YEARS, FALL HAS become virtually synonymous with pumpkin spice, as U.S. grocery stories and cafés tout the flavor in everything from beer and lattes to Oreo cookies. But the trend is even more novel—if not downright impressive—when you consider how Americans once viewed the squash.
Among colonial settlers, pumpkin “was a food of last resort,” says Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon. Because the crop was a new-world native, it was seen as primitive. In fact, “pumpkin eater” was a derogatory term for a poor, ignorant farmer. (Hence the nursery rhyme “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,” about a man who can’t read or spell.) Things began to change when Americans flocked to cities in the mid–19th century. Nostalgia for farm life meant nostalgia…