Pumpkin Pie Day and National “Kiss the Cook” Day in USA

Once they sprout, pumpkins take between 90 and 120 days to reach maturity. Did you know 50 million pumpkin pies are baked every year? Pumpkin pie, the hallmark of Thanksgiving, has been stealing the show for hundreds of years. According to the American Pie Council, 1 out of 5 Americans has eaten an entire pumpkin pie by themselves.

The first written evidence of the phrase “kiss the cook” is in an Italian-English dictionary by Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti, published posthumously in 1813. He translates the phrase Chi tardi arriva male alloggia as, “they that come too late must kiss the cook.”

In 1817, William Beloes’ The Sexagenarian; or, the Recollections of a Literary Life in Two Volumes was reviewed and excerpted in a well-regarded literary journal that “commanded unprecedented power and influence from the 1820s through the 1840s.” The review included an excerpt that reads, “At a dinner where great satisfaction was expressed, it was facetiously proposed that the president should proceed to the kitchen, and kiss the cook.”