Skip to main content

Where's the rest?

Using Sullivan's Jamaica Cookery Book as a foundation, there aren't many Caribbean pumpkin recipes that survived the test of time in terms of popularity. Pumpkin rice and stewed pumpkin are the only recipes that really have persisted, while others have become somewhat forgotten. For example, one recipe that stands out from the pumpkin section of Sullivan's cookbook is the recipe for pumpkin pie (enlarge picture for recipe and annotations). In the United States, it's easy to associate pumpkin with more sweet flavors, like pumpkin spice lattes or pumpkin pies with cinnamon and star anise. Unlike in the Global North, pumpkin in Caribbean recipes is typically considered savory. It really makes you wonder how the pumpkin pie became what we in the Global North think it is, but it's likely that these dishes existed simultaneously and aren't connected, since pumpkins are native to the Caribbean and the Northern USA alike. In Sullivan's cookbook there are a few recipes that lean towards sweet flavors like pumpkin tarts and pumpkin pudding, but in contemporary recipes, it's become a pretty exclusively savory ingredient. 

Linked here are some examples of contemporary Caribbean pumpkin dishes. Although these recipes may not have been written down in the 19th century, so we may not know if something similar existed at that time, pumpkin is now popular in curries and soups. These recipes use the usual suspects found in Caribbean cooking: onion, garlic, scotch bottet peppers, and ginger.