Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

In the United States and Canada, fall is synonymous with garnet, tangerine, and tawny leaves, a sudden chill, melancholic equinoxes, and patches of fresh and juicy pumpkins. The most popular American harvest of the season, pumpkin is lucratively presented in US households as the spiced, custard-filled dessert, pumpkin pie, that is a traditional mandate for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other occasions of fall and early winter. But the iconic pie does not end as a sumptuous meal-conclusion but goes on to be used in a classic American beverage, the Pumpkin Pie Milkshake.

To make a perfect glass of the Pumpkin Pie Milkshake, all that is needed is to add a cup of milk and a few large scoops of vanilla ice cream to a slice of leftover pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving, blend the ingredients well, and top it with a generous dump of homemade whipped cream. This makes the Pumpkin Pie Milkshake a Thanksgiving delicacy that must have been the ingenious creation of someone contemplating what to do with leftover pie from the celebrations.

It was towards the end of the 19th century that Americans started consuming milk beverages made with flavoured syrups. In 1922, a Walgreens employee by the name of Ivar ‘Pop’ Coulson added two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a few sachets of malted milk powder to a large glass of milk creating the modern milkshake recipe. Since then, the ingredients that have been blended into the shake to create distinct flavoured variants are innumerable, including the pumpkin pie.

It is believed that the North American pumpkin was discovered by early American colonists who introduced this squash variant to France and Tudor England where it quickly became a pie filling. The earliest pumpkin pies made by the American setters were savoury soups, which transformed into the modern dessert in the 18thcentury, and became a Thanksgiving delicacy in the century that followed.

In some Pumpkin Pie Milkshake recipes, the classic American whiskey Bourbon is added in sparse quantities. History tells us that after the American Civil War, the pumpkin pie was rejected in the Southern States as a symbol of cultural imposition by the North. To distinguish their cuisine, the Southerners added Bourbon and pecans to the pie, which must have been the source of the liquor’s occasional inclusion in the milkshake today.