What is actually in pumpkin spice? Four jars, compared

The joke about pumpkin spice is that there is no pumpkin in it, which is true and which everyone already knows. The more useful fact is buried one layer down, on the back of the jar. Line up four pumpkin spice blends from established spice merchants, read the ingredient statements in order, and only three spices appear in all four: cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. That is the whole of the agreement. Everything else is a house decision.

The four labels

McCormick, the one in most American cupboards, lists cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. Simply Organic lists organic cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves, and says on the front of the package that it is four spices and nothing else. Penzeys hand-mixes six: China cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, mace, and cloves. The Spice House also lists six, in a slightly different order: cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, mace.

• In all four: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg.
• In three of four: allspice (absent from Simply Organic) and clove (absent from McCormick).
• In two of four: mace, which only the two six-spice blends carry.

Clove is not the constant you think it is

Ask a cook to name pumpkin spice from memory and Clove almost always makes the list. It is the dark, pungent, medicinal note people associate with autumn baking, and it is the first thing you taste when a blend has too much of it. Yet the single best-selling pumpkin spice in the United States does not contain any. McCormick reaches for allspice instead, which lands in roughly the same territory, warm and slightly peppery with a hint of clove about it, but softer and less likely to take over a custard.

Run it the other way and the same thing happens in reverse. Simply Organic drops allspice and keeps clove. So the two spices most people would call definitional are each missing from a major blend, and they tie at three jars out of four. Neither one is load-bearing. The three that are load-bearing are the three nobody argues about.

What mace is doing in two of them

Mace is the lacy red aril that grows around the nutmeg seed, so a blend carrying both is using two parts of the same fruit. That is not redundancy. Mace is brighter and more floral than nutmeg, with less of the sweet muskiness, and it lifts a blend that would otherwise sit heavy. It shows up in the two six-spice mixes and in neither of the four-spice ones, which is a fair summary of what the extra two slots are for: not more flavor, more lift.

The cinnamon question nobody labels

Only Penzeys says which cinnamon it used, and it says China cinnamon, which is cassia rather than Ceylon. The other three just say cinnamon. In practice almost all of them are cassia, because cassia is what the American spice trade means by the word, and it is the bolder, hotter bark that stands up to pie filling. This is not a scandal, it is a labeling convention. But it does mean the dominant note in your pumpkin spice is a spice most jars decline to name precisely.

One jar tells you nothing at all

A fifth blend is worth a mention for the opposite reason. Spice Islands sells a pumpkin pie spice whose ingredient statement, in full, is the word Spices. The marketing copy elsewhere on the page describes six of them, but the statement a buyer is entitled to rely on lists none. There is nothing wrong with the product and this is a legal way to declare a spice blend, yet it is a useful reminder that the label is the only thing you are owed, and sometimes the label has been written to say as little as possible.

What to do with this

• If you like the dark pungent edge, buy a blend that lists clove, or add a pinch of your own. Do not assume it is in there.
• If pumpkin spice has ever tasted harsh to you, clove is the usual culprit and a clove-free blend is a real option.
• Cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg get you most of the way. Mix those three and adjust; that is what the four-spice blends are doing.
• Ignore the order on the front of the package and read the ingredient statement, which is listed by weight.

The point is not that one of these blends is right. It is that pumpkin spice is a category rather than a recipe, and the jars are further apart than the name suggests. Once you know which three spices are actually fixed, the rest of the blend is yours to argue with.