The Fall holidays, especially Halloween and Thanksgiving, come around the time of the pumpkin harvest. With pumpkins in good supply, pumpkin dishes have become a popular traditional item on the dinner menus for this time of year, and for the special occasions such as Thanksgiving Dinner.

The pumpkin dish that best represents the popularity of the pumpkin is undoubtedly the pumpkin pie dessert, an American favorite for generations. Although the pumpkin is often regarded as a vegetable, and is frequently eaten as part of the main meat and vegetables course, it is as a sweet dessert that it has gained its strongest culinary following in North America.

Pumpkin pies are traditionally a mixture of the sweet pumpkin flesh with eggs, sugar and spices, which is cooked in a pastry pie crust until it sets. It is usually served with cream or ice cream as a dessert.

The traditional recipe combines:

2 cups of cooked and mashed pumpkin - it is a good idea to pass the mashed pumpkin through a sieve to yield a more smooth texture in the final cooked pie.

3 slightly beaten eggs

half a cup of granulated sugar

half a cup of brown sugar

half a cup of corn syrup

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 and a half teaspoons of ground cinnamon

half a teaspoon of ground nutmeg

half a teaspoon of ground ginger

half a teaspoon of ground cloves

When well mixed this mixture is poured into a pastry pie crust and cooked at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until it sets, which takes about 40 minutes.

The basic pumpkin pie recipe has been enhanced with numerous recipe variations, usually adding an extra flavor dimension to the simple traditional pumpkin pie. For example, pecan nuts, maple syrup, honey and apples are just some of the readily available ingredients that have been successfully used to complement the taste of the original pumpkin pie recipes.