Autumn marks the arrival of pumpkin season. For many families, a homemade pumpkin pie is the crown jewel dessert on the Thanksgiving buffet. Unless you’re a Black American family. In that case, sweet potato pies will grace the table.
While cultural tastes influence what we eat during the holiday season, the pumpkin vs. sweet potato is too simplistic. True, white families are more likely to savor pumpkin pie, but pumpkins aren’t inherently white. I grew up eating pumpkin and sweet potato pie. The latter by far is my favorite.
To dig into the history of these desserts in the U.S., I reached out to Charla Draper, the Chicago-based founder of National Soul Food Month and a former food editor at Ebony magazine.
“Food is culture and is based on, generally, where you grew up. Folks who grew up in the South were more exposed to the sweet potato. We had an affinity because they were very similar to the West African yam, and that may have resulted in how it became so popular in Black culture,” Draper said.
Sweet potato pie may be a remix of the European affinity for carrot pie.
“The sweet potato pie evolved from the creativity and mother wit of African Americans. It was a very popular staple item back in the era when we were enslaved. They’re very nutritious, high in carbohydrates, higher in sugar, high in vitamin C and vitamin A. We make it work,” Draper said.
Draper introduced me to the writing of Sarah Hale, author of the 19th century book “Northwood: A Tale of New England.” She’s the one who lobbied President Abraham Lincoln for an American Thanksgiving holiday, and when describing the meal, a pumpkin pie capped off the final course.
“She was a New Englander, so she put the foods on the table that were most familiar in her local community, and pumpkin was served readily available in New England — more so than the sweet potato,” Draper said.
Pumpkins are a part of the Cucurbitaceae family — fruits that include squash, melons, cucumbers and gourds — and are native to the land that is Mexico today. Indigenous communities harvested pumpkins, refuting the idea that pumpkins are “white” and also adding a layer of complication for me around Thanksgiving as a holiday because of its ties to colonization and genocide.
But I also recently learned that pumpkins once served as a symbol of abolition leading up to the Civil War. The framing was Northern farming virtue of the pumpkin versus the brutal Southern plantation. Scholars say the women who championed Thanksgiving as a holiday were strong abolitionists. That blew my mind.
I relayed all of this new information to my family as I sought answers about our traditions. Earlier this week, I baked a pumpkin pie with my mother. She pulled out a decades-old Betty Crocker cookbook that has a crust recipe she favors. I rolled the dough and mixed dry and wet ingredients. Generous helpings of ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg created a more robust-tasting pumpkin pie.
I asked my mother, an excellent baker, why she cooked pumpkin pies. Her mother migrated from Georgia and only cooked sweet potato pies. I was surprised to learn the first time my mother saw a pumpkin pie was in her 20s at her future in-laws’ home when she dated my father.
“You obviously must have enjoyed pumpkin pie at some point,” I said.
“No, the only reason I would bake a pumpkin pie is because your father liked pumpkin pie, and it was a fairly easy pie to make,” she said. “It’s not a bad-tasting pie, but I like to save my calories. If I’m going to have something that’s sweet, I want something that’s really going to satisfy me and be good. And that would be sweet potato pie over pumpkin pie.”
These kitchen anecdotes are a reminder that food tells family stories. My late paternal Black grandmother, also a stellar baker, grew up in integrated Springfield, Illinois, and cooked stereotypical Midwestern food.
As my aunt likes to tell us, they did not eat soul food growing up, and my grandmother served asparagus before it became today’s popular vegetable. For my father, pumpkin pie is a slice of childhood. I asked him which pie he preferred.
Without hesitation, he answered: sweet potato.
Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University.