In cooking, pumpkin world makes many people who not to recognize that there is the big squash world exists around. Many people daily still confuse pumpkin and squash while they are different. In many places, pumpkin is widely used more than squash, so it seems that pumpkin is the easy word to name and remember. In reality, there is the huge world of squash in which pumpkin is just a part. It is said that there are a hundred to a thousand types of squash if we can count.
To know about pumpkin world or the world of squash, it may take from us a lot of time because there are so many types to talk about. However, there are some interesting details to make us not to be confused between squash and pumpkin, also it is easy to remember of them in distinguish as below:
A pumpkin is a squash but a squash may not be a pumpkin
This is the simplest detail to think about pumpkin and squash in their huge world. Although the pumpkin world has many types but pumpkin is considered a type of squash only, so all types of pumpkin belong to squash – it is.
The summer and winter squashes
The squash world is mentioned with summer and winter squashes to distinguish about their varieties. Two groups with summer and winter squashes have a thousand of types for each group with different names that you cannot remember. But you do not need to remember them too, because there are just some typical types are used in cooking widely.
The summer squash is mentioned to the squashes which have shorter time in storage. It does not mean about the season. Summer squashes are usually in a week or just some weeks while winter squashes in are kept throughout some months.
And for more detail, the pumpkin world belongs to winter squash group with the main species as Cucurbita pepo but there are some types may from the species of Cucurbita maxima and moschata.
The pumpkin world is not just round and orange
One more interesting detail is that, traditionally, pumpkin is attached with the round form and orange in color, so it sounds strange if there are different form and different outer color. However in reality, pumpkin world with rich types has different forms and different outer colors. Pumpkin may have the long form instead of round form or it may have the green or dark green outer instead of orange.