As I write this, the month of August lingers, which means we still have a few solid weeks of summer left before autumn is upon us. One need only open a door or window to feel that truth smack them right across the face. So why, then, are we already seeing pumpkin spice versions of food stuffs pop up in grocery stores all over the country? And is it, as we sometimes hear yelled from the occasional comedy venue's audience member, too soon? How soon is too soon?
Perhaps before we try to answer that, we should first look back on how this whole craze came to be a thing in the first place. Researching the topic, I genuinely expected it to go back quite a bit farther than it actually does. Indeed, while the combination of certain spices with pumpkin itself does go way back, what we as modern Westerners have come to know as the quintessential flavoring that is "pumpkin spice" is newer than you might think.
The very beginning, though? Well, as far as we can tell, the earliest milestone in its history was somewhere during the 1620s, when early American settlers used a spice blend similar to our modern one in their pumpkin pies. Fast-forward a few centuries to the 1930s, and we see the first instances pop up of pre-blended spice mixes made specifically for pumpkin pie. Come the '50s, those same types of spice blends began being marketed as "pumpkin pie spice," only to have the "pie" part dropped about a decade later, leaving us with the first appearance of a spice blend using the name "pumpkin spice" occurring in the 1960s. Still, pumpkin spice pretty much remained relegated to the world of pumpkin pie until a pivotal moment which occurred many years later... in 2003.
Yep, believe it or not, the first official application of pumpkin spice into something aside from pumpkin pie seems to have been by none other than ol' daddy Starbucks with their early 2000s introduction of the now widely beloved Pumpkin Spice Latte (or PSL, for short). I know, I found this hard to believe, too, but all of my digging around online repeatedly led me back to this. Granted, 40 years is an awfully long time for no one at all to have sprinkled pumpkin spice into something other than a pumpkin pie, but Starbucks appears to have been the first to do so in any official capacity and actually market the thing. And while I might not be the biggest fan of Starbucks generally speaking, as a fan of most things pumpkin spice, I salute them for that.
So, back to our original question: How soon is too soon for pumpkin spice? The answer, of course, is subjective, but if it were up to me? I would draw the line at the first day of fall. It just fits with the season, feels a little weird to dip into when it's still 100 degrees out, and relegating it to later in the year helps to keep it even more special.
But what do you think? Write in and let us know. Apart from that, enjoy what's left of the summer, and I'll talk to you all next issue!
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