FermenteaWhere food goes to change
← Recipes

Modern method

Spiced pumpkin leather

Loading ratings…

Cooked pumpkin blended with honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, spread thinly and dried into a rollable sheet.

Suggest a correction
Spiced pumpkin leather on a warm ivory background.

The preserve

Pumpkin leather is a chewy sheet of cooked puree dried with honey and spices. It belongs with fruit leathers and other compact dried preserves. It is useful where small batches of puree would otherwise languish in the refrigerator, and it provides a different texture from dried slices or powder. This entry preserves the NCHFP ingredient proportions and drying temperature.

Sources for this section

Ingredients

The metric volumes are rounded household conversions, not weight measurements. Use the US-volume quantities if following the original exactly. This recipe does not use honey to establish shelf stability in a wet jar: its preservation step is drying.

Sources for this section

Equipment

Use a dehydrator with a temperature setting around 60°C and a manufacturer-approved non-stick fruit-leather tray or liner. A food-safe silicone liner suitable for the machine is a practical alternative to the plastic-wrap tray lining in older extension instructions. Do not assume ordinary cling film is suitable for an oven or dehydrator; check the material's temperature rating.

Sources for this section

Storage

The NCHFP pumpkin-leather example recommends up to one month in a cool, dark place. For a genuine winter reserve, wrap and freeze the finished leather rather than extending that room-temperature estimate. General NCHFP fruit-leather guidance allows frozen storage for up to a year. Mark the batch date and distinguish “dried” from merely “cooked”.

If the finished sheet grows mould, discard it. Do not scrape a patch away and roll the rest back up. Moisture-proof packing matters because a dry leather can take water back from damp room air.

Sources for this section

History

A contemporary household preparation; no single inventor or birthplace is claimed.

Ingredients

Scaling: source batch only

Cooked pumpkin puréecooked pumpkin puree, about 475 ml by volume
473 mL2 cup as recorded
Honeyhoney, about 120 ml
118 mL½ cup as recorded
Cinnamonground cinnamon
1.2 mL¼ tsp as recorded
Nutmegground nutmeg
0.6 mL⅛ tsp as recorded
Clovesground cloves
0.6 mL⅛ tsp as recorded

Method

Risks and precautions · Standard risk
Spoilage during storage

Finish drying through the center; cool and wrap, then freeze for longer storage.

Hazard source

Finish drying through the center; cool and wrap, then freeze for longer storage.

Control source

Finish drying through the center; cool and wrap, then freeze for longer storage.

Contains honey: do not give to children younger than 12 months.

  1. Begin with fresh cooked puree that has been handled hygienically, or a newly opened can of plain pumpkin. If preparing from fresh fruit, cook the flesh until soft, separate it from the rind and puree until smooth.
  2. Blend in the honey and all three spices evenly. Thick lumps are undesirable because they make drying uneven.
  3. Spread over the prepared liner in an even layer approximately 6 mm (¼ inch) thick. Leave a small border so the wet puree cannot run over the tray.
  4. Dry at 60°C. NCHFP's pumpkin-specific example gives 6–12 hours, but begin testing at six hours and allow longer if the centre is still wet. A clock alone cannot identify dryness across different machines and puree water contents.
  5. Check the centre and any thicker patches. The finished sheet should be pliable without a wet or sticky centre; pressing it should not leave an indentation. Remove the sheet when it reaches this endpoint rather than making the edges crisp while ignoring a damp middle.
  6. While sufficiently flexible, separate from the liner and cut into portions. Wrap individual pieces in food-safe wrap or parchment, then seal in an airtight bag or container. Cool fully before final sealing.

Conditions

Temperature60°C
Temperature controlMulti-stage

Places

Unknown

Relationship not established · Place not established

The selected method does not establish its geographical origin.

Location source 1 →

Related

Made from

  • Frozen pumpkin purée

    Cooked pumpkin mashed, cooled and frozen in portions: a plain base for pies, soups and baking without canning a dense purée.

Equipment

  • Blender: countertop, personal and immersion forms

    A food blender uses motor-driven blades to purée, emulsify, grind or disperse ingredients in a jar or directly in a pot. Countertop, personal and immersion forms differ in vessel and limits; food processors remain a separate tool family.

  • Food dehydrator

    A countertop electric appliance circulates warmed air across food on open trays to remove moisture. Round stackable and rectangular cabinet designs use different airflow paths; materials, capacity and controls vary by model.

  • Food thermometer and refrigerator thermometer

    A food probe measures the temperature inside food at the probe tip; a refrigerator thermometer measures the cold storage environment. They answer different questions and cannot establish acidity or validate a preservation process.

  • Freezer

    A household freezer holds food in a frozen state for storage and selected texture or separation work; its batch-storage role differs from industrial equipment that freezes individual pieces separately.

  • Refrigerator used as a produce store

    An ordinary household refrigerator used to store selected fresh produce in vented crates or drawers, at low temperature and at a humidity chosen by the drawer. Not every crop benefits from cold.

Read more

  • After Halloween: how the world saves its pumpkins

    A full harvest-to-pantry guide to keeping pumpkins whole, drying and freezing them, and making pickles and sweet preserves around the world—with the exact distinction between tested canning and cold storage.

Related in the family

  • Asparagus with cho-gochujang

    A Korean banchan of blanched asparagus dressed with a sweet-sour cho-gochujang sauce; Hyosun's version cools the spears in ice water before tossing.

  • Berries stored in seal oil

    Berries, greens and fish eggs were kept in seal oil by Indigenous Alaskan communities. The oil seals the food from air, and the result depends on preparation and the surrounding conditions.

  • Dry salt-cured ripe olives

    Fully ripe dark olives are mixed with salt and turned weekly as salt draws out moisture. Distinct from existing brine-fermented and lye-treated olives.

  • Frozen mushrooms

    Steam-blanched frozen mushrooms are whole, button, quartered or sliced mushrooms given a short steam treatment, cooled promptly, packed with headspace and kept frozen.

  • Frozen raw mushrooms

    Frozen raw mushrooms are cleaned mushrooms frozen without a preheating step, the variant a Japanese forest-volunteer manual describes beside its cooked version.

  • Fruit preserved in honey

    Fruit and some other foods were placed in honey in ancient Mediterranean kitchens. The honey's concentrated sugar does the preserving, and wet ingredients weaken it.

  • Green olives lye-treated

    Green olives debittered in a sodium hydroxide solution, then rinsed repeatedly and held in brine, by the University of California's published home-pickling method.

  • Mushroom Jam (Sweet Concentrated Mushroom Preserve)

    An experimental sweet mushroom preserve developed in Indian food-processing research, made by cooking mushroom pulp with sugar, added pectin and citric acid until concentrated into a thick, spreadable jam.

Community

No community contributions have been published for this entry yet.

Share what you made

Sign in to contribute. Published comments and photos are free to read.

Share a creation photoSuggest a correction

Sources