If you walk into any Indian kitchen today—North, South, East, or West—you are likely to find a pumpkin (kaddu, kumro, mathan, gummadikaya, pushnikai). It may be simmering in a Bengali ghonto, cubed into a Gujarati shaak, mashed into Keralite erissery, sweetened into North Indian halwa, or cooked down into Maharashtrian bharit. The pumpkin feels native, eternal, almost inevitable in the Indian plate.
But—again, like potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, papaya, pineapple, and cashews—the familiar orange pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima, C. moschata), the zucchini-like squashes, and many “New World gourds” were not originally Indian. They arrived barely 400 years ago.
Yet India has had gourds for thousands of years. Bottle gourd (lauki, sorakaya), ash gourd (petha), snake gourd (padaval), and pointed gourd (parwal) are truly ancient South Asian crops. So how did the newcomers appear? And how did Indians decide which gourds to keep, which to ignore, and which to enthusiastically adopt?
This is the story of a family reunion of gourds—some ancient, some foreign—that reshaped the Indian culinary landscape.
1. India’s Ancient Love Affair With Gourds
Long before chilies and tomatoes, long before the Vedas were compiled, Indians were already cooking bottle gourd. Archaeologists have found Lagenaria siceraria remains at:
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Mehrgarh (7000–5000 BCE)
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Harappa (2600–1900 BCE)
Ash gourd (Benincasa hispida) too appears in early medical texts:
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Charaka Samhita recommends ash gourd juice as a cooling remedy.
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Sushruta Samhita prescribes it for fevers, digestion, and even mental calmness.
Ancient Indian recipes loved gourds because:
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They grow easily in heat
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They can be stored
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They tone down spices and lentils
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They are neutral canvases for flavor
When foreign gourds arrived, they entered a land already seasoned with gourd expertise.
2. Enter the New-World Squashes (1500–1700 CE)
“Kumda,” “Kadoo,” “Kaddu” — suddenly everywhere
The pumpkin we know today—orange, sweet, starchy, and perfect for sautéing—belongs mostly to two American species:
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Cucurbita maxima
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Cucurbita moschata
They arrived with the Portuguese, who were enthusiastic carriers of garden crops. Sixteenth-century Portuguese records from Goa mention pumpkins in kitchen gardens and monasteries by the 1560s.
By the 1600s, pumpkins appear in:
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Mughal agricultural manuals
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Bengal land records
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Gujarati community cookbooks (some of the earliest Indian regional cookbooks!)
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Tamil Sangam-era commentaries updated after Portuguese arrivals, noting new cucurbits
Pumpkins were an instant success because Indians instantly recognized:
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“Ah, it behaves like lauki!”
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“It absorbs spices beautifully.”
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“It keeps well.”
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“It can be used in sweets AND savoury dishes.”
Pumpkin required no conceptual leap.
It slid into Indian cuisine like a cousin who has always been part of the family.
3. How Pumpkin Entered Regional Cuisines
Bengal: From Zero to Kumro-fest
Bengalis adopted pumpkin with almost reckless affection:
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Kumro ghonto
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Kumro chingri
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Kumror bora (fritters)
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Kumro’r dudh puli (sweet dumplings with pumpkin)
By the 18th century, pumpkin was so common that it appears in daily market price logs from Calcutta.
Kerala: The Art of Mathan
Pumpkin folded into:
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Erissery (pumpkin + coconut + lentils)
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Avial (mixed vegetable curry)
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Payasam (pumpkin kheer variations)
It suited Ayurvedic “cooling foods” extremely well.
North India: Kaddu Ki Sabzi and Halwa
Mughal and later North Indian kitchens integrated pumpkin in two directions:
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Sweet: kaddu ka halwa (descendant of Persian-style halwa-e-kaddu)
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Savoury: UP–Bihar style sweet-and-sour kaddu with fenugreek
Gujarat & Rajasthan: Shaaks and Kaddu-Puri Traditions
Gujarat innovated:
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Pumpkin cooked with jaggery + sesame
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Kathiawadi kaddu sweet-sour shaak
Rajasthan paired pumpkin with:
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Gram flour
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Dry spices
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Yogurt or buttermilk
Assam & Northeast: Silent Integration
Pumpkin appears early in Assamese tenga, Naga mixed vegetable dishes, and tribal cooking, though without the fanfare found in Bengal or Kerala.
4. What Happened to the Native Gourds?
One might expect the new pumpkins to displace old gourds, but that never happened.
Bottle gourd remained essential:
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For koftas
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For lauki kheer
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For Ayurvedic cooking
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For making sitars, veenas, and other musical instrument resonators
Ash gourd held firm:
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In North Indian petha
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In Udupi kootu
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In Kerala pooshanikkai moru curry
Pointed gourd (parwal) stayed a Bengali–Bihari favourite.
Snake gourd and ridge gourd continued flourishing in the South.
The new pumpkins added variety, not replacement.
5. Anecdotes That Reveal the Cultural Shift
Anecdote 1: The Wedding that Changed Pumpkin’s Destiny
Folklore in Uttarakhand claims pumpkin was first used in a wedding feast by a chef who ran out of bottle gourd—the next day, villagers were shocked by how delicious the “fat new gourd” was. Pumpkin farming began soon after.
Anecdote 2: The Marwari Trader and the Pumpkin Seeds
Gujarati oral histories mention a merchant who brought “giant squash seeds” from Goa and planted them near Ahmedabad—reportedly giving away seeds with every sale for a year to popularize the crop.
Anecdote 3: The Assamese Monk’s Letter
18th-century letters from Vaishnavite monasteries mention how a new “orange gourd” from traders replaced ash gourd in certain monastic dishes because it was easier to cook and required less fuel.
6. Why Did Some New World Gourds NOT Catch On?
Not all squashes succeeded.
Those that didn’t become common:
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Spaghetti squash (stringy texture unfamiliar)
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Acorn squash (too hard; didn’t match Indian chopping styles)
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Many small decorative gourds (no culinary use)
Those that became regional but not national:
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Zucchini (popular only in urban/restaurant cuisines)
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Certain Cucurbita pepo varieties (preferred in the Himalayas but not elsewhere)
Indians selectively adopted what worked harmoniously with:
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Pressure cooking
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Tempering
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Lentils
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Coconut-based gravies
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Jaggery–tamarind profiles
Pumpkin simply fit the grammar of Indian cooking.
7. Did India Influence Pumpkin Varieties? Yes!
India became a major zone for local domestication and diversification:
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Indian pumpkins today are genetically distinct from early Portuguese introductions.
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The elongated mathan of Kerala, the round green pumpkin of Bengal, and the large North Indian yellow pumpkin represent local breeding over 300–400 years.
In a botanical sense:
India has created its own pumpkin identity.
8. Cultural Symbolism of Pumpkin in India
Today pumpkin is:
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Used in Shani Puja
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Smashed to ward off evil (nazar battu)
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Hung on construction sites
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Featured in folk songs about prosperity
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Associated with seasonal harvest cycles
From foreign newcomer to symbolic guardian of homes—the pumpkin has come a long way.
9. Why This Story Matters
The pumpkin’s journey reveals something profound about Indian cuisine:
India does not reject or blindly adopt. It absorbs and transforms.
New ingredients become Indian only when they bend to our tastes, rituals, and imagination.
This is the same reason potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, cashews, guavas, and papaya became essential—India made them part of its soul.
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