The Hill I Will Die On: Pumpkin Spice Is the Best Coffee Flavor Until Further Notice

The hill I will die on pumpkin is one I plant a flag on the first cool morning of September, with a candle already lit and a cup of coffee going cold beside me: pumpkin earns every single bit of its season. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin muffins. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin cheesecake. And my very favorite thing in the world, pumpkin caramel sheet cake. I am also prepared to declare, out loud and in writing, that pumpkin spice is the best coffee and creamer flavor there is until further notice. 🎃

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Now, y’all know I do not plant a flag without going looking for backup first, and the backup on this one started out embarrassing for my side. Starbucks put the pumpkin spice latte on the menu in October of 2003, and it did not contain one drop of actual pumpkin until 2015. Twelve years. The team that built it has said since that when they tested fall flavors with customers, pumpkin scored at the bottom of the list and chocolate and caramel scored at the top. So the drink that defines autumn for millions of people nearly got thrown out for being unpopular, and the flavors that beat it were chocolate and caramel. Which, I would like the record to show, is exactly what I put in my sheet cake.

Here is the other thing I learned and cannot stop repeating: pumpkin pie spice contains no pumpkin at all. It never has. It is cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves or allspice, and that is the whole thing. The spice is not named after what is in it. It is named after what it is for. And it is old — Amelia Simmons put ginger and allspice in a “pompkin” pie in an American cookbook in 1796, and the spice companies started selling the blend premixed in a jar back in the 1930s. Starbucks did not invent this. Starbucks put it in a cup and got the credit.

And then I found the detail that made me put my coffee down. A German nun named Hildegard of Bingen wrote a book on plants and medicine in the 1150s, and her entry for nutmeg says it will calm the bitterness of your heart and mind and make you cheerful. Her recipe? Equal parts nutmeg and cinnamon, a little clove, mixed with flour and water into small cakes. Eat them often, she says. That is pumpkin spice. A woman in the twelfth century wrote down pumpkin spice as a prescription for feeling better, eight hundred and fifty years before anybody thought to put it in a paper cup, and her feast day lands on September 17, right when the whole world goes orange. I did not need to be right this badly. But I am.

Hill I Will Die On Pumpkin — Where That Can on Your Shelf Actually Comes From

Since I was already down the hole, I kept going, and the supply chain turned out to be almost funny. Nearly all of the canned pumpkin in this country comes from one town: Morton, Illinois, population about seventeen thousand, where a Libby’s plant has been canning pumpkin since 1925. Something like eighty-five percent of the world’s canned pumpkin comes out of that one building. There is a pumpkin festival every September. The governor of Illinois signed a piece of paper in 1978 officially naming it the Pumpkin Capital of the World. Every pie at every Thanksgiving table you have ever sat at probably started in the same handful of Illinois fields.

And the pumpkin in that can is not the pumpkin on your porch. Libby’s uses a variety called the Dickinson, which is tan on the outside, not orange, and which is technically a squash. The FDA has known this the whole time and does not care one bit. In a policy it has been repeating since 1938, the agency says it will not go after a canner for putting “pumpkin” on a label when what is inside is a golden-fleshed sweet squash. Their reasoning is that nobody is being fooled and nobody is being harmed, which is the most sensible thing I have ever read out of a federal agency. So no, the can is not lying to you. Pumpkin and squash are cousins, they bake the same, and the jack-o’-lantern on your steps would make a stringy, watery, disappointing pie anyway.

Which brings me to the one genuinely useful thing I picked up, and I am handing it to you free. Raw pumpkin is up to ninety percent water, which is why so many pumpkin bakes taste like spice and not like pumpkin. Dumping in more purée just makes everything soggy. What you do instead is cook the purée down in a saucepan first, low and slow, until it darkens and thickens, and throw the spices in while it cooks so the heat wakes them up. Then you have got actual pumpkin flavor instead of a vague orange suggestion. I wish somebody had told me that fifteen years ago.

But here is the real argument, and it has nothing to do with Illinois or the FDA. One can of pumpkin is about two dollars, and out of it I can make bread for the neighbors, a pan of muffins for a Sunday morning, a cheesecake for a potluck, or that caramel sheet cake that disappears before it is fully cool. It is the cheapest way I know to make a whole house smell like people are coming over. My fall brunch menu for a crowd leans on apples and cranberries instead, and I will tell you honestly that the pumpkin version of that table has been forming in my head ever since. That is not hype. Hype does not survive twenty years and it does not smell like that.

Hill I Will Die On — Pumpkin FAQ

Is the hill I will die on pumpkin really about pumpkin, or just about pumpkin spice?

Both, and I want to be honest that they are two different things. Pumpkin is the vegetable in the bread and the pie and the cheesecake. Pumpkin spice is the warm spice blend that goes with it, and it is what I want in my coffee cup. I am defending them separately and I am defending them equally.

Wait, there is no pumpkin in pumpkin spice?

There is not, and I was a grown woman with five children before I found that out. It is cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves or allspice. You can mix it yourself in about eleven seconds with what is already in your cabinet, which is worth knowing in October when the little seasonal jar costs four dollars.

Is canned pumpkin actually squash?

Mostly yes, and it does not matter. The big brands use a variety called the Dickinson, which sits on the squash side of a family line that was blurry to begin with. It purées smoother, tastes sweeter, and has less water in it than a carving pumpkin. You are getting the better vegetable, not a worse one.

What do you say to people who are tired of pumpkin spice?

I say I understand, because when it turns up in tortilla chips and dog treats and candles I get a little tired too. But being annoyed at pumpkin spice cottage cheese is not the same as being annoyed at pumpkin, and somewhere along the way people started throwing out the pie because they were sick of the marketing. Be mad at the tortilla chips. Leave my bread alone.

Fine — what is the single best thing to make with it?

Pumpkin caramel sheet cake, and the good news is you do not have to take my word for it anymore — I made it on camera and the whole recipe is now up on the website. Soft spiced pumpkin cake, a brown sugar caramel frosting that sets up like fudge, and 40 squares out of one pan. That is one two-dollar can of pumpkin feeding a crowd, which is the entire argument I have been making this whole time.

So that is the hill I will die on pumpkin, and I am standing on it with a medieval nun, a federal agency, and the entire village of Morton, Illinois somewhere behind me. Tell me in the comments — are you already three pumpkin candles deep, or are you one of those people who thinks September is too early? And what is your one pumpkin thing? Because somebody is about to tell me pumpkin belongs in a soup and I want to hear the whole argument before I decide how I feel about it.

More Hills Worth Dying On — Strong Food Opinions from Stephanie

• The Hill I Will Die On: Decaf Coffee Is an Abomination — the cup I am putting all this pumpkin spice creamer into had better have caffeine in it.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Matcha Anything — No Thank Ya — the other seasonal drink flavor everybody swears by, and the one I will not be joining you on.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Watermelon and Corn Are the Taste of Summer — the same argument, pointed at the other end of the year.
• The Hill I Will Die On: Pork Is a Wonderful, Magical Animal — another time I went looking for backup and found a federal agency already sitting on my side of the table.
• Every hill, sorted by the kind of argument — all my strong food opinions in one place, or browse them newest first.

The Hill I Will Die On — About Stephanie Longstreth

Stephanie Longstreth is the home cook, mom, and storyteller behind StephanieCooksForACrowd.com. She cooks for a family of seven in Florida — five kids, two cats, and one husband who appreciates a good meal. Four of her children came home through adoption, and family stories are woven into everything she makes and shares. Find her crowd-friendly recipes, weekly meal plans, and real family life on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest @stephaniecooksforacrowd.