Je jure par la grande citrouille!

Who knew Thanksgiving food was so hard to describe in other languages? The other day I found myself idly wondering how to say "pumpkin pie" in Cajun French. My first thought was carabasse, which turned out to be nothing more than a catalanisme of my own invention. Never in a million years would I have come up with either the actual word, giraumont (or--to give it a spelling reflective of its pronunciation in Vermilion Parish--juremont), or its equivalent in Standard French, citrouille.

I should know by now that food terminology is always going to be a morass, the more so the longer something has been cultivated. In SF, giraumon [sic] is the turban squash, also known as the potiron turban or bonnet turc. (Potiron is the SF cover term for varieties of the squash species Cucurbita maxima, which includes buttercup; in popular usage, however, it's synonymous with citrouille, even though pie and carving pumpkins are varieties of C. pepo.) The cognate to Catalan carabassa (and Spanish calabaza) is calebasse, and it's not a Cucurbita at all but a member of the related genus Lagenaria.

At least I have an answer to my original idle question: tarte au juremont. This prompted a small attempt to Cajunise the rest of the menu, starting with the dinde farcie (which actually means "roasted", not "stuffed", which is bourrée even thought "stuffing" is fars) and coming to a dead halt at "mincemeat pie".