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Pumpkin
Cucurbita · Squash
10 varieties40 pairings
A pumpkin is the round, ribbed, thick-shelled fruit of certain Cucurbita vines — typically orange, but also white, green, blue-grey or buff — grown for its dense, sweet flesh, its hull-less or shelled seeds, and, in autumn, for carving. Mild and squash-green raw, it turns sweet, nutty and caramelly when roasted, baked or simmered into soup and pie.
Picking a good onedrag
Cured hard, just pickedSoft-spotted, weeping
Shop firmThe all-rounder: roast, soup, pie, curry.Everyday best
StemHard and dry, cut short
Rind under a nailNail marks it, will not pierce
SkinMatte, one pale ground patch
Smell at the stemFaintly green, clean
What to look for, from cured hard, just picked to soft-spotted, weeping.
What one gives you
70%
Usable yield
952 g flesh · rind, seeds and stem out
1360 g
Typical weight
one specimen
Keeping ittap a band
Whole, it wants a cool room, not the fridge: below 10 C the rind pits and it rots on the way out. Cut wedges invert — wrap and chill those.
Humidity
50–70%
Drier than almost anything else you keep: above 70% the stem scar moulds, below 50% it loses weight and the flesh goes stringy.
Airflow
Open and airy
Stand them apart on a slatted shelf, never bagged or stacked deep — trapped damp under the fruit is where the first soft patch starts.
Gives off traces, yellowed by apples
Non-climacteric, so it gives off only traces itself, but others' ethylene yellows a green rind and shortens the keeping — no apples nearby.