The story behind this classic Thanksgiving dessert: All you need to know about the history of pumpkin pie

When it comes to choosing a Thanksgiving dessert, statistics show that pumpkin pie is a firm favorite among Americans.

Pumpkin power

In a poll published in the lead-up to Thanksgiving Day 2025 - which is held on Thursday, November 27 in the U.S. - YouGov found that an unmatched 30% of American adults opt for pumpkin over alternative pie fillings such as apple, pecan or sweet potato.

Instacart, a U.S. grocery-delivery service, has also shared data that illustrates pumpkin pie’s status as a go-to Thanksgiving dessert.

Drawing on the firm’s figures from 2024, Instacart trends analyst Alex Orellana told Food & Wine magazine this month that orders for pumpkin pie “surged more than 2,000%” on the day before Thanksgiving.

“Other Thanksgiving staples like apple and pecan pie follow close behind”, Orellana added.

A versatile, vitamin-packed American favorite

A fruit that offers a taste described as “mildly sweet”, pumpkin is a winter squash whose flesh is soft, smooth and creamy when cooked. Native to North America, pumpkin is grown in vast quantities in the U.S.

In 2024, says the country’s Department of Agriculture (USDA), American farmers produced nearly 1.5 billion pounds of the fruit.

The U.S.’s vast nationwide network of production - headed up by states such as Illinois, California, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania - is, in no small part, thanks to the high demand for pumpkin at Thanksgiving in late November, and at Halloween a month earlier.

A rich source of vitamins A and C, pumpkin is known for its versatility: it’s used in a range of sweet and savory recipes.

It’s not only the core ingredient in a popular Thanksgiving pie, but can also feature in anything from breads, cookies and muffins, to soups, smoothies and yogurts.

What’s the recipe for pumpkin pie?

In a typical pumpkin pie recipe, mashed pumpkin is mixed with eggs and condensed milk, and can be further sweetened with brown sugar. Extra flavor is provided by adding cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and salt, before the pumpkin filling is poured into a pastry crust made from flour, salt, butter and water.

The uncooked pie is then placed inside an oven preheated to 400ºF, and baked for about 40 to 60 minutes. You’ll find more detailed instructions on how to make a pumpkin pie here and here.

So why is pumpkin pie so popular at Thanksgiving?

Before European colonists began arriving in America around the turn of the 17th century, pumpkin had been widely cultivated and consumed by Native Americans.

Thanks to its abundance, allied with its ease of growth and storage, it quickly became popular with settlers from the Old Continent.

It’s thought that pumpkin was a founding feature of the Thanksgiving festival, a harvest celebration whose origins are traced back to a 1621 feast held in today’s Massachusetts, by English colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans.

Speaking to the Smithsonian Magazine, the historian Cindy Ott conceded that there is no actual written evidence that pumpkin was part of the original feast. However, Ott said it’s likely people ate it “that day, the day before, and the day after”.

Nearly two centuries on, the earliest known publication of a pumpkin pie recipe came in Amelia Simmons’ 1796 book American Cookery. (Simmons called it “pompkin pie”.) Early in the 19th century, the writer Sarah Josepha Hale then played a key role in cementing the pie’s status as a Thanksgiving fixture.

In her 1827 novel Northwood: A Tale of New England, Hale placed the pumpkin pie front and center as she laid out the fundamental elements of the typical Thanksgiving meal.

“She virtually invented it, the turkeys, the cranberry sauce and everything,” the culinary historian Bruce Kraig told NPR. “And she said pumpkin pie is the American pie.”

Hale’s influence on Thanksgiving went well beyond the dinner table. She’s even credited with helping to persuade President Abraham Lincoln to issue the 1863 proclamation that established the celebration as a national holiday held in late November.

Thanksgiving’s place on the U.S. calendar puts it in sync with the growth cycle of pumpkin - a fruit that’s among those typically ready to harvest in the fall.

“[Pumpkin] tends to be seasonal, which makes it special and automatically evokes the feasting that goes along with this time of year,” Lucy Long, the head of the Center for Food and Culture, told Newsweek.

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