Curio Cabinet

They may have won the battle…and they also won the war. On this day in 1781, the last defining battle of the Revolutionary War took place when General George Washington, with the assistance of French allies, commenced an attack against the British in the Battle of Yorktown. At the time, the outlook for the war was looking bleak from both sides. Support for the fighting was fading in Britain, especially since the country was busy fighting Spain and France in an unrelated conflict. For the Americans, supplies were dwindling and the Continental Army’s war chest couldn’t maintain the war for much longer. To have a hope of winning, the Americans needed a decisive victory that severely limited the British forces' ability to maintain control of the American coast. So, in 1781, Washington and French ally Lt. Gen. Comte de Rochambeau marched their combined forces from New York to Yorktown, Virginia, a port occupied by British General Charles Lord Cornwallis. Before starting their assault on Yorktown, however, the allies had their French naval forces engage the British navy in the Battle of the Capes, blocking Chesapeake Bay and preventing Cornwallis from receiving much-needed supplies and reinforcements. This left Cornwallis with just 9,000 tired troops against Washington and Rochambeau’s 19,900.
 
The British weren’t completely without advantages, though. A series of redoubts, smaller, temporary fortifications around a main fort, gave them a highly defensible position. However, Washington and Rochambeau were well equipped with artillery and accompanying ammunition, while the British were critically low. The Americans and French dug a series of trenches around British fortifications, allowing them to maintain an artillery barrage with near impunity. After a series of daring maneuvers including a nighttime raid on British fortifications, Cornwallis surrendered to Washington on October 19. Although the war didn’t officially end until September 3, 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the Battle of Yorktown all but ended the fighting. Remaining British soldiers were unwilling to risk their lives for what seemed like a lost cause, and just a few months after the Siege of Yorktown, the British Parliament passed a resolution calling for an end to the war. Sometimes, you have to know when to quit.

 
[Image description: A painting depicting the Siege of Yorktown, with military commanders speaking in front of white tents. Near the center, Lt. Gen. Comte de Rochambeau raises his arm to point.] Credit & copyright: Siege of Yorktown (1781) by
Auguste Couder, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Who had the biggest hand in making puppets mainstream? That would be writer, producer, and puppeteer Jim Henson, who was born 86 years ago this month. While he is known as a pioneering force in puppetry and the father of the beloved Muppets franchise, not everyone knows much about his early career. Henson’s family encouraged his artistic pursuits from a young age, and he began performing with homemade puppets on local television in the D.C. area while he was still in his teens. But he would get his first big break in college, when he started producing Sam and Friends, a puppet-focused sketch comedy show, which aired on a local NBC affiliate. The success of Sam and Friends led to his puppets being featured on shows airing on national television, as well as commercials.
 
Henson did, of course, go on to create Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, giving rise to other popular characters like Big Bird and Kermit the Frog. However, Henson's impact on popular culture wasn’t limited to creating his colorful cast of puppet characters. He was also determined to make them accessible and appealing to a wider audience. Throughout his career, Henson constantly dealt with producers, studios writers who believed that puppets were only for child audiences. It was a preconception he fought against throughout his career, and he wasn’t afraid to aim for more mature audiences with his puppet-oriented shows and movies. In fact, Henson even had a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live called The Land of Gorch, which isn’t very well known today. The humor was risqué and the character designs more grotesque, but the style of the sketches still clashed with the rest of the show, drawing disdain. Other cast members refused to be involved with The Land of Gorch, and one writer, Michael O'Donoghue, was known to have commented, “I don’t write for felt.” Henson’s puppets only appeared during the show’s first season, but he didn’t give up on his pursuit of elevating puppets to being more than children’s fare. His work on dark fantasy films like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal are still fondly remembered today by adult fans. Even though Henson passed away in 1990 at the age of 53, there’s no doubt that his legacy is still going strong. Viva la puppets!

 
[Image description: Jim Henson motions toward a museum display showcasing two of his Muppet characters.] Credit & copyright: Bernard Gotfryd Collection, Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cloves. That’s all there is to the ultimate blend of fall flavor: pumpkin spice. (Unless you count the chemical blend found in Starbucks’ famed pumpkin spice latte, which we’ve written about before.) But how did the blend come to be, and how did these particular spices, some of which can only be grown on Indonesian islands, become so strongly associated with autumn in North America?
 
The answer begins with European colonization in Asia, and the world’s first multinational corporation: the Dutch East India Company. Established in 1602, the Dutch East India Company was given a 21-year monopoly over trade in Asia by the States General of the Netherlands. This gave the company access to a multitude of goods that no one else in Europe could procure–the most popular of which were spices. In fact, the Dutch took full control of a group of islands where spices were plentiful, the Maluku Islands in east Indonesia, and dubbed them the “spice islands.” The islands’ location was hidden from the rest of the world, which helped make the Dutch East India Company one of the most successful businesses on earth. It was even the first company to ever issue stocks. Within a decade, the Dutch had created a popular spice blend called speculaaskruiden, or “gingerbread spices”, in English. As the name suggests, the blend became a popular seasoning for gingerbread, which was traditionally made in the fall and winter. It was also used to flavor speculaas, also known as spiced bread or “windmill cookies.” these shortbread biscuits were traditionally eaten in the Netherlands around St. Nicholas’ Day, in early December. While speculaaskruiden contained some ingredients also found in modern pumpkin spice, like cinnamon and cloves, it also included white pepper and cardamom, making it an arguably “spicier” spice.
 
The mellowing out of speculaaskruiden (aka its transformation into what we think of as pumpkin spice) began with the British colonization of North America. Native Americans grew many varieties of squash, including pumpkins. Pumpkins’ resistance to cold and most insects made them attractive to European colonists. Pumpkins’ inner flesh could be cooked and mashed, like potatoes. Hollowed pumpkins were sometimes filled with spiced milk and cooked directly over open fires. Soon, pumpkins became a popular export to England, where people had been creating pastries with both sweet and savory fillings for centuries. While pumpkin on its own was a fairly savory dish, bakers quickly discovered that the squash paired well with local British derivatives of the Dutch speculaaskruiden mix. Pumpkin pies quickly became popular, as did the spice mix used to flavor them. Since the spices were associated with autumn thanks to their long-held role in gingerbread and shortbread, and pumpkins were associated with America, it made sense that by the time Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, pumpkin pie was seen as an autumnal, American staple.
 
It wasn’t until 1934 that American spice company McCormick officially coined the term “pumpkin pie spice” while selling their own version of the blend. The name quickly spread beyond McCormick, though, and was shortened to today’s better-known“pumpkin spice” as companies began adding it to teas and mass-produced pastries. Starbucks’ famous pumpkin spice latte was released in 2003, and its popularity set off a modern pumpkin spice trend that has yet to fade. These days, pumpkin spice can be found in just about anything you can think of each autumn, from the traditional (pies, scones) to the surprising (chocolates, marshmallows) to the questionable (potato chips). Hey, why not branch out a bit this fall?

 
[Image description: Steam rises from pumpkin-shaped mugs.] Credit & copyright: JillWellington, Pixabay