Ah, pumpkin spice—the infamous flavor blend pasted everywhere in autumn. The walls of every Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are littered with posters promoting their new, seasonal, pumpkin spice products, from lattes to cookies to candles—hell, someone even made pumpkin spice AVOCADO OIL, of all things. No matter where you are, you can’t go anywhere without seeing promotional material for this mysterious flavor.
I recently had the opportunity to try one of these delicacies myself. It was your average Friday afternoon, and after school, to celebrate the end of a long week of college applications and AP classes, I indulged in a Boston Creme donut and, for the first time in my life, a pumpkin spice latte. The latte was sweet, the spices noticeable but slightly muted, with the coffee kick coming in abruptly and at seemingly random moments. To me, it was pretty good, but being my usual contrarian self, I still couldn’t understand the hype. Sure, it was pretty good, but nothing to wait outside in the freezing fall weather in a 20-meter line for. So I started thinking: What’s the deal with pumpkin spice lattes? Is it nothing more than a huge advertising campaign, or are my taste buds just indifferent?
To start, what actually is pumpkin spice? Many people have different recipes, but most recipes include five core ingredients: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and allspice. Originally, these five ingredients were used for pumpkin pies, a staple of fall holidays. Back in the 18th century, a woman named Amelia Simmons created a cookbook with two recipes for pumpkin pie, both using those same spices. Yet all of the spices were packaged separately, until in 1933, when two companies, Thompson and Taylor Spice Co. and McCormick and Co. started producing a new product called Pumpkin Pie Spice. It quickly caught on, and due to McCormick advertising the product as being “good for both pumpkin pie and gingerbread,” it started its rise as the seasonal spice it’s known as today.
Fast forward 70 years ago to 2003—Starbucks was attempting to find new seasonal drinks to sell, and Peter Dukes, the head of the team responsible for hits like the peppermint mocha, came up with the idea to make a pumpkin-pie-flavored latte. It was tested in ten locations across DC and Vancouver, and it became a hit. However, surprisingly, there was no actual pumpkin used in it. Customers started complaining, and other people started making variation brands of the pumpkin spice latte (also known as the PSL), until in 2015, Starbucks caved in and finally started putting actual pumpkin puree in their lattes, and that’s where we are now.
But how about the sales? Was it something that was just a flop product for a while and needed a little advertisement boost to help sell? Surprisingly, no. Since its release in 2003, pumpkin spice lattes are estimated to have grossed over 1.4 billion dollars for Starbucks alone. In addition, pumpkin spice-flavored products have grossed over half a billion dollars in the past year. It’s clear that ever since it was released, it’s been a hit no matter what.
However, we still haven’t really gotten to the main point: Why is pumpkin spice so popular? The answer, surprisingly, relies on how your brain understands smell. According to neurologist Sarah Corniea, most sensory information goes through the thalamus to get to the different places where sensory information is stored. However, “Information about smells skips the thalamus and goes straight to the cortex,” making it so smells can access the region of the brain quicker. Additionally, the area of the brain where sensory information regarding smell is stored “is intertwined with brain areas involved in emotion and memory processing. This may be one of the reasons odors are able to evoke such vivid memories.” So as it turns out, it’s the nostalgic memories of the smell and taste of a pumpkin spice latte that connect customers with fall and keep them coming back for more every year.
Reflecting back on my experiences, it’s surprising how far back pumpkin spice has reached. From all the way to “the first American cookbook” using the blend for pumpkin pie all the way back in the 1700s, all the way until now, where you can find pumpkin spice cereals, pumpkin spiced dog treats, even pumpkin-spiced grass-fed meatballs. With all this nowadays, I can sum up two things: Thompson and Taylor would be proud of how it’s gone, and yes, my taste buds are definitely unenlightened.