When Sir Walter Raleigh’s men set foot on Roanoke Island in 1585 they found the Indians growing a vegetable named “Macócqwer … called by us Pompions … and very good.” It was also very plentiful, and by the seventeenth century colonists were reciting a bit of doggerel that reflected their indebtedness to—if not their delight in—the ubiquitous squash: “We have pumpkins at morning./Pumpkins at noon./If it were not for pumpkins/We should be undoon.”

But the settlers soon found that while stewed pumpkin could sustain life, once it was baked in a pie it actually became good to eat. By the time of the Revolution pumpkin pie had become the reigning delicacy on the Thanksgiving table; and by the nineteenth century it was almost sacrosanct, “a thing of beauty and a joy” to the author of one cookbook, who said that “for the first pumpkin pie of the season, flanked by a liberal cut of creamy cheese, we prefer to sit down, as the French gourmand said about his turkey: ‘with just the two of us; myself and the turkey!’”

It was in the face of this sort of sentiment that, just in time tor the 1893 holiday season, Harper’s Weekly chose to attack this most American of all confections:

“We are somewhat surprised on examining the records to find that pumpkin pie has never been brought into court. … We [should] thoroughly examine it, and determine if possible whether or not this form of plastic food which now holds the American people in its grasp is worthy of confidence. The physical aspects of pumpkin pie are too well known to need more than a passing glance. Pumpkin pie is almost invariably found with but one crust (the lower), and is therefore open-face pie, or, as some scientists prefer, membraneous-top pie. … It is eaten, by those addicted to the habit, either hot or cold, the taste for it in the latter condition usually marking a later stage of the craving. It is said, on what appears to be trustworthy authority, that many of its victims in Massachusetts and other parts of New England habitually swallow large quantities of it at breakfast. …

“In this judicial examination of the pumpkin pie it is allowable, as a help to establishing its character, that we look into its antecedents. … We find the pumpkin to be, apparently, the largest of fruits; but on cutting into it it is discovered to be hollow, the spacious interior being simply festooned with a clammy variety of vegetable cobweb, in which the seeds are suspended. Why the pumpkin should not grow solid like the orange is not apparent, unless it is simply to gain credit for size of which it is not deserving. … The pumpkin must be set down as a hollow and hypocritical vegetable, and association with it cannot but have a bad effect on character. …

“We wish to raise the