Pumpkin Pie Shot

Pumpkin schnapps, vanilla vodka, and cream — the spice blend in American colonial cookbooks since the 17th century, McCormick commercially bottling it from 1934.

The Pumpkin Pie Shot is a seasonal dessert shooter built on the pumpkin spice flavor combination — cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice or clove — that became one of the most commercially dominant American seasonal flavors of the early 21st century. Pumpkin pie itself has deep roots in American colonial cooking: the first printed recipes for pumpkin-based preparations in the American colonies date to the 17th century, and the New England Thanksgiving tradition solidified pumpkin pie as the definitive American autumn dessert through the 18th and 19th centuries. The specific spice blend associated with pumpkin pie — whose primary aromatic compounds include cinnamaldehyde from cinnamon, gingerol and shogaol from ginger, and eugenol from cloves — became commercially bottled as McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice from 1934 onward. Starbucks's introduction of the Pumpkin Spice Latte in the autumn of 2003 — which became the best-selling seasonal beverage in the company's history — accelerated pumpkin spice's transformation from a pie-specific flavor into a marketing category spanning beverages, confectionery, and spirits. Pumpkin spice schnapps and pumpkin liqueur products entered the American spirits market in significant numbers from the 2010s onward, and the Pumpkin Pie Shot's combination of these with vanilla vodka and cream became a standard seasonal bar offering.