Sugar pie pumpkin
Cucurbita pepo · Squash
Top 10 pairings
The sugar pie pumpkin — also sold as sugar pumpkin, pie pumpkin or New England pie pumpkin — is a small, round, deep-orange, ribbed winter squash bred specifically for the oven rather than the porch. Where the big jack-o-lantern carving pumpkin is hollow, coarse-grained, watery and bland, the sugar pie is a compact fruit of only a kilo or two with thick, dense, fine-grained flesh that is sweeter, drier and far less stringy. Halved and roasted, it scoops to a smooth purée — this is the pumpkin behind a proper homemade pumpkin pie, and the type most of canned pumpkin descends from.
Picking a good onedrag
Cured hard, just pickedSoft-spotted, weeping
Shop firmEveryday bestThe all-rounder: roast, soup, pie, curry.
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
These cues are Pumpkin's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
70%
Edible part
952 g flesh · rind, seeds and stem out
1360 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
A whole one wants a cool room, not the fridge. Below 10 C the rind pits. Chill cut wedges.
50–70%
Humidity
Open and airy
Airflow