History of Butternut Squash Soup

I could find virtually no information on the history of butternut squash soup so the best I can do is give you the history of butternut squash (or at least the best I could find on that as well). 

Butternut squash is a gourd which was found as far back as Ancient Egypt. Squash itself, as you may have guessed from the history of pumpkin above, is New World. When colonists landed in North America, the Native Americans introduced them to a vegetable they had been eating for centuries – the squash (or, in the native Narragansett language: askutasquash).

Butternut squash is considered a winter squash which was discovered in Peru. However, the butternut squash in particular was bred by a man by the name of Charles Legett in Massachusetts in the mid 1940s. He sought to create a hybrid between the gooseneck squash and the hubbard squash that was compact and tough enough to transport. It is said that the name “butternut” came from the observation that the squash was as “smooth as butter, sweet as nut.”

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