Fruit list
A-Z list of fruits
Apple - a global favourite
fruit and a good source of vitamin C
Apricot - soft, sweet
and juicy orange coloured fruit packed with beta-carotene.
Avocado - Fatty soft
flesh and a large stone in a thin outer casing. These trees produce hundreds
of fruits which taste buttery and rich.
Breadfruit- a single Malayan tree
produces up to 200 or more grapefruit sized fruits each season. Breadfruit
flesh can be roasted, baked or fried and the taste is like bread (hence the
name).
Banana - yellow curved
tropical fruit beloved the world over. In terms of global sales this tops
the list of fruits. Originally from tropical Southeast Asia bananas grow pointing
upward on the worlds largest
herbaceous flowering plant. Most people mistake
the plant for a tree, but once the fruits are ripe the main stem (which may
have grown to 25ft tall) dies off and a new one starts growing. Although the
common yellow banana is a sweet tasting fruit the starchier common plantain
is also popular, but often makes an appearance in savory dishes, particularly
in the West Indies.
Blackberry - The
fruit of the bramble bush which is a very common european wild bush, blackberries
are also cultivated and blackberry jam is a british favourite. Picking blackberries
is enjoyable, but the bush has sharp spines. Blackberries find their way into
wines and liqueurs, but apart from jam, their most common use is in blackberry
and apple pies.
Blueberry - A north
American fruit high in antioxidants. The small bushes grow in acidic soils,
producing hundreds of small blue fruits in early summer.
Cherimoya- or custard apple. A delicious
south american fruit with a white flesh which does indeed taste of apples
and custard. The seeds and skin are toxic, but the flesh is utterly delicious.
Cherry - Related to both
plums and apricots, the cherry tree produces small red fruits with a distinctive
taste. Sweet and fragrant, cherries are a midsummer treat.
Clementine - A
sweet orange citrus fruit from the mandarin family. Clementines are much easier
to peel than oranges.
Coconut - Should this even be in a
list of fruits? The fruit of the coconut palm is harvested throughout the
tropical world for food, oil and Coir (the brown fibrous husk of the coconut).
Cranberry - American
bog berry, high in vitamin C. An astringent taste makes it a great breakfast
fruit.
Custard Apple
- see Cherimoya
Durian - A thorn-covered outer layer
reveals a strong smelling fruit that is most definitely an acquired taste.
Grapefruit - A
breakfast favourite, The large sharp but succulent grapefruit has a yellow
skin and is about three times the size of an average orange. Much more sour
than an orange and with a bitter tang too, the grapefruit needs to be fully
ripe or alternatively a little sugar can be added.
Grape - Clusters of green,
yellow or red fruits grow on vines in many parts of the world. Eaten fresh
or turned into wine, grapes are a very popular fruit.
Guava - Round or oval fruits between
4 and 12 cm long. The taste is slightly perfumed and sweet and Guavas are
packed with vitamins A and C.
Jackfruit - Related to Guava but
much bigger fruits that can grow to 80 lbs in weight. the taste is unique
and many westerners find they cannot enjoy them, but in Asia jackfruits are
hugely popular.
Kiwi - Green to brown skinned
fruit with a hairy surface. Inside is a sharp but sweet flesh that goes equally
well in a traditional sweet fruit salad as it does in a tomato salad. Try
slicing kiwi and tomato and layering them alternately in a dish. A sprinkle
of salt is all you need to complete this surprisingly good salad.
Lemon - The king of citrus
fruits and essential in Mediterranean cookery. Southern Italy is particularly
famous for cooking with lemons.
Lime - Green relative of the
lemon. Vitamin C rich limes were given to british sailors to ward off scurvy,
which kept them healthy but led to the nickname 'Limey' being used as an insulting
term for a british person.
Melon - In Italy the melon sellers walk
the beaches selling slices of cool watermelon to sunbathers. The massive heavy
round green fruits are cut open to reveal a deep red watery sweet flesh that
seems to dissolve in the mouth. One of the worlds great summer pleasures is
spitting the inedible watermelon seeds out as far as possible.
Nectarine - A hairless form of peach
that grows in slightly more northern latitudes than its more tender cousin.
Delicious to eat freshly picked from the tree. Nectarines have a sweet orange
coloured flesh full of juice.
Orange - Popular citrus with many varieties.
The navel orange is so called because the depression at the end looks like
a bellybutton.
Peach - The fine experience of picking
and eating a fully ripe peach from a tree and eating it there and then has
little competition for unalloyed pleasure. A thin downy skin parts to reveal
rich succulent flesh that is sweet and delicious.
Pear - A northern european native, the
pear is a wonderful fruit although not as popular as apples these days, largely
due to shorter shelf life.
Pineapple - Very popular in the 17th
Century when first imported into europe. Sir Christopher Wren wanted to replace
the ancient Gargoyles on the roof of St Georges Chapel in Windsor with a row
of stone pineapples, but thankfully, wiser heads prevailed.
Plum - Plums are small stone fruits that
taste wonderfully sweet when very ripe, but quite tart while ripening. The
can be found in many colours including yellow, white, green or red, but most
commonly they are a deep purple shade (often with a white waxy bloom on the
outside).
Pomegranate - These fruits have
been popular in tropical regions for thousands of years. The juice is now
sold as having health giving high antioxidant levels.
Quince- The quince is related to apples
and oranges, but unlike its relatives quinces are too hard to eat raw and
taste pretty poor too. They need to be 'bletted' (softened by frost and then
a little decay) before being eaten. They are generally used to make jams and
jellies which have a certain 'christmassy' scent that sets them apart from
other fruits.
Strawberry - So easy to grow and
so delicious to eat. For the british, strawberries and cream are the ultimate
taste of summer. At the Wimbledon tennis championships 28,000 kilogrammes
of strawberries are eaten by spectators. The only problems with strawberries
is that the sweetest varieties only last a short time once harvested, so supermarkets
often have varieties which may look nice, but taste of practically nothing.
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