Fruit

In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant. In cuisine, when discussing fruit as food, the term usually refers to just those plant fruits that are sweet and fleshy, examples of which would include plum, apple and orange. However, a great many common vegetables, as well as nuts and grains, are the fruit of the plants they come from.

Botanic Fruits vs Culinary Fruits

Many foods are botanically a fruit, but are treated as vegetables in cooking. These include cucurbits (e.g. squash and pumpkin), maize, tomatoes, aubergines (eggplants) and green peppers, along with nuts, and some spices, such as allspice, nutmeg and chiles.

Related Topics:
Cooking - Cucurbit - Squash - Pumpkin - Maize - Tomato - Aubergine - Pepper - Nuts - Spices - Allspice - Nutmeg - Chiles

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Rarely, culinary "fruits" are not fruits in the botanical sense. For example, rhubarb, in which only the astringent stalk, or petiole, is edible. Similarly, carrot jam is a popular Portuguese dish, and according to European Union rules a carrot is defined as a fruit when measuring the proportion of fruit contained in a jam.

Related Topics:
Rhubarb - Petiole - Carrot jam - Portuguese - European Union - Carrot

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