butternut squash soup

Ingredients: Squash, Carrot, Coconut Milk, Onions, Quinoa, Cilantro, Pink Salt, Maple Syrup

Butternut squash soup doesn't have a single inventor. It grew out of much older traditions. Squash itself is native to the Americas. The species butternut belongs to, Cucurbita moschata, was domesticated thousands of years ago in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America, and Indigenous peoples cooked squash into stews and porridges long before Europeans arrived. After contact, squash and pumpkins spread to Europe, where they became common in soups, like French pumpkin potage. The butternut variety is surprisingly recent. It's generally credited to Charles Leggett, who developed it in Stow, Massachusetts, in the 1940s. He reportedly named it butternut because it was smooth as butter and sweet as a nut. Butternut squash soup as we know it today, puréed, often with onion, stock, and warm spices like nutmeg or ginger, became a popular restaurant and home dish in the United States in the later 20th century, especially as a fall and winter staple.