Surprise, Canned Pumpkin Isn’t the Prettiest Pumpkin on the Label, but It Tastes Good Anyway
What I’m about to share may surprise you, but these cans of orange puree labeled “canned pumpkin” don’t actually contain pumpkin. Don’t panic, everything will be fine.
According to Food & Wine , the product in the can is actually a mix of different pumpkins like Hubbard, Golden Delicious, and walnut. At first I was a little shocked, until I realized that a pumpkin is still a vegetable marrow, and not very good. Real pumpkins can be stringy and watery, and mixing different pumpkins allows growers to produce a product that produces consistently good pies, which is all you need to care about anyway.
Now that the veil has been lifted and you know the shocking truth, it’s time to rebuild, and I recommend rebuilding with the pie. If you’re not sure which can of pumpkin to bake in your tart of lies, know that Cook’s Illustrated recommends Libby’s for its “smooth, even texture,” “light sweetness,” and “pronounced pumpkin flavor.” (Or should I say “outstanding that-we-agreed-taste-pumpkin taste”?) If you’re still too shocked to even think about how to make this autumn staple deception, just cook the sweet potato pie. Better anyway.
Update: According to Snopes , 90% of the canned pumpkin sold in the US is not actually a mixture of nuts and other pumpkins, but rather a puree of Dickinson’s pumpkin, which was developed by Libby and looks more like a butternut pumpkin. the orange gourd in which we cut out the faces. Snopes also notes that “it is difficult to make a clear distinction between ‘pumpkin’ and ‘squash’ because there is no strict botanical definition of pumpkin. Semantic, squash-type pumpkin, and the Dickinson cultivar is listed as a pumpkin , like the others . moschata varietals “.
I just learned that canned pumpkin is not pumpkin at all, and my whole life is mostly a lie | Food and wine