В США один федеральный стандарт качества регулирует как тыкву, так и кабачки в консервах

The USDA grades pumpkin and squash on one standard, and the FDA is why your can says pumpkin One federal grade standard covers both of them, and since 1938 the FDA has told canners it would not go after them over the name alone when what is in the can is golden-fleshed sweet squash. I buy a lot of canned pumpkin once the weather turns and I've never once thought about what's actually in it, which is a strange thing to admit about an ingredient that ends up in soup and quick bread all fall. The can says pumpkin, I picture the orange thing on the porch, and that's as far as it goes. The federal government is a great deal more relaxed about the whole question than I was, and once I went looking, the paperwork turned out to be the interesting part. One standard, both names USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service publishes voluntary grade standards for canned goods, and the one that applies here is titled Canned Pumpkin and Canned Squash, which covers both names on a single scale. U.S. Grade A is defined there as canned pumpkin or canned squash that has good color, good consistency, good finish, is practically free from defects, has a normal flavor, and scores at least 85 points. Grade C reads the same way one notch down, with fairly good color, consistency and finish, fairly free from defects rather than practically free, the identical requirement of a normal flavor, and a 70-point floor. The two foods are never pulled apart anywhere in the standard itself, and the graders work from one score sheet covering both. The labeling question got settled separately and much earlier. FDA's compliance policy guide on the subject, CPG Sec. 585.725, says that for products made from golden-fleshed sweet squash, or from mixtures of that squash and field pumpkin, the agency considers the word "pumpkin" to be in essential compliance with the common-or-usual-name requirements of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The guide notes that FDA had been advising canners along those lines since 1938, and its own dateline reads issued 6/20/69, revised 8/20/73, reissued 10/1/80 and 12/8/88, so this isn't a recent loophole anyone slipped through. The agency has been back to the document three times since writing the policy down, and the version standing today says that in the absence of any evidence the designation misleads or deceives consumers, it sees no reason to change the policy. The label never has to say which plant it was Nothing on the can has to tell you which plant is in there. FDA's guide says canned pumpkin "has for many years been packed from field pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) or certain varieties of firm-shelled, golden-fleshed, sweet squash (Cucurbita maxima), or mixtures of these," which is already two different plants plus any mixture of the two. University of Illinois Extension keeps a list of pumpkin varieties with a processing group in it, Buckskin and Chelsey and Dickinson Field and Kentucky Field, described as all Cucurbita moschata, tan skin color, widely used for commercially canned pumpkin. That's a third species again, and it's the tan-skinned one rather than the orange you would expect. The grade standard doesn't care what color that skin is, because what it asks for is golden flesh in a firm-shelled, sweet variety of pumpkin or squash. Libby's is more forthcoming than the can is. A 2016 harvest release from Nestle describes the pumpkin as made from a variety called Dickinson, quotes the agriculture manager at its canning facility in Morton, Illinois, and tells readers outright that pumpkin is a form of squash and a member of the Cucurbitaceae family along with zucchini, cucumbers and watermelon. Illinois runs the category, and USDA's Economic Research Service reported in a November 2020 chart that about three fourths of the country's processing pumpkin acres are grown and canned in Illinois, that almost 80 percent of Illinois pumpkin production is for processing rather than for porches, and that no other top state sends more than 5 percent of its share to processing. What to buy if you roast your own Illinois Extension's guide to choosing a pumpkin says processing pumpkins, the ones also sold as pie or sweet pumpkins, have high sugar content, more flavor, less water, and smooth-textured flesh, and that pie pumpkins have a less grainy texture than jack-o'-lantern pumpkins. It recommends staying in the four to eight pound range if you plan to cook one. The bad outcome here belongs to anyone who buys a carving pumpkin in October, feels thrifty about it, and roasts it into a pie that comes out loose and bland. If you want to start from a whole pumpkin, buy a small one sold as a pie or sugar pumpkin and leave the big one for the front steps. The two cans that aren't the same thing There's a second can sitting right next to the first one and they aren't interchangeable. Libby's sells 100% Pure Pumpkin, which it describes as pure pumpkin with nothing added, and it also sells Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix, which already has the sugar and the spices in it and whose directions tell you to stir in two-thirds of a cup of evaporated milk and two eggs to fill a nine-inch pie. Swap the mix into a recipe written for plain puree and you've added a pile of sugar and a full spice blend that the recipe already accounts for somewhere else. Libby's sells the pure pumpkin in two sizes, a 15-ounce and a 29-ounce, so a big can on the shelf is not automatically the mix. The name on the front is the difference, and the ingredient list on the back settles it. What I actually do with the plain stuff Two things get made in my kitchen out of the plain can. Pumpkin Soup With Canned Pumpkin uses two 15-ounce cans of puree with broth, cream, a nut or seed butter, and a warm spice mix, and it's a ten-minute simmer, a pass with an immersion blender, and twenty more minutes with the lid on, which the card puts at forty minutes start to finish once you count the ten minutes of prep. It feeds eight, and there's no roasting and no peeling anywhere in it. The other is Pumpkin Cranberry Bread, which takes 7 1/2 ounces of canned pumpkin, or half a 15-ounce can, along with flour, sugar, eggs, oil, orange juice, pumpkin pie spice, and a full 1 3/4 cups of cranberries with most of them stirred into the dry ingredients and the rest scattered over the top. It bakes at 350 degrees in a 9x5 loaf pan and it wants a long oven, 70 to 80 minutes with fresh cranberries and 80 to 95 with frozen, and it slices neater the longer you let it cool. One word on a label covers at least three different plants, a single federal standard grades all of it alongside squash, and none of it changed what came out of my oven. I still reach for the same can. I just know now that the word on the front is doing more work than I ever gave it credit for.