18Fruit

To a botanist, a fruit is the part of a flowering plant that grows from the ovary and holds one or more seeds. To a cook, it is something else: a snack, the heart of a dessert, a bright sauce or soup, or a partner for meat, fish, shellfish and poultry. No other group of foods gives you as wide a range of colors, flavors and textures.

Cooks sort fruit by how people think of it and use it, not by strict botany. That gives eight groups: berries, citrus, exotics, grapes, melons, pomes, stone fruits and tropical fruits. Each group is defined by shape, by how its seeds are held, or by where it grows. So a tomato, a bean, an eggplant or a pepper is a fruit to a botanist, but a vegetable in the kitchen. Names change too: one fruit may be called different things in different regions or by different suppliers.

Whatever the fruit, three questions come first when you buy it: is it in season, how has it been stored, and how ripe is it? When you use it, it should be at its peak, because that is when its flavor, texture, smell and look are best. Fresh, frozen, canned and dried fruit all have a place, raw or cooked.

18.1 Berries and citrus

Berries

Berries are small and juicy, with thin skins and lots of seeds, often too tiny to notice. They grow on bushes and vines all over the world. The kitchen group does not match botany exactly: raspberries and strawberries are not true berries, while bananas and grapes are, though they are sorted elsewhere.

Berries stop ripening the moment they are picked, so they must ripen fully on the plant. When you buy them:

• Choose plump berries with full color.
• Pass over any box stained with juice, and any berries with gray-white or black spots of mold.
• Keep every kind of berry in the refrigerator and use it soon.
• Wash berries only just before you need them. Water takes away some of their aroma and makes them soft.

Berries are good eaten plain, and they go into breads, soups and sorbets. They make especially good jams and compotes.

• Blackberries look like large, glossy raspberries, deep purple to black. Their thorny vines grow wild in many places, and few are farmed. Loganberries, Marionberries, olallieberries and boysenberries are all crosses of the blackberry.
• Blueberries are small and firm, blue to nearly black outside and gray-blue and juicy inside. Farmed high-bush berries are usually bigger than wild low-bush ones. They come from North America, and their season is short: mid-June to mid-August.
• Cranberries are firm, sour berries with a blotchy red skin, grown on low vines in bogs. People seldom eat them raw. They go into sauce, relish, breads, pies and pastries, and they are easy to find frozen or as canned jelly sauce. Color does not tell you if a cranberry is ripe, so sort through them before cooking and throw out soft or bruised ones.
• Currants are tiny, sour berries that hang in bunches like grapes. Red ones are the most common; black and golden (white) kinds exist too. Every kind goes into jams, jellies and sauces. Black currants also flavor a liqueur, crème de cassis. The dried "currants" sold for baking are not these berries but a kind of dried grape.
• Raspberries may be the most fragile fruit of all, tart and velvety. A ripe one slips easily off its white core and leaves a hollow in the middle. Red is most common; black, purple and golden kinds are also sold. They crush easily and go moldy fast, so most of the crop is sold frozen.
• Strawberries are bright red and heart-shaped. The tiny black seeds on the outside, called achenes, are in fact the plant's true fruits. Pick berries with good red color and a green leafy cap (the hull) still on; a paring knife lifts the hull out. Avoid soft or brown spots. Very large berries look good but are often hollow, with little juice or flavor.
  ▶ Watch

Citrus

Citrus fruits include lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, kumquats and several crosses. Each has a thick rind. Most of the rind is a bitter white layer called the pith, or albedo. Over it lies a thin colored skin called the zest. Inside, the flesh is juicy and divided into segments. Citrus is acidic and strongly scented, and it can taste bitter, sour or sweet.

Like berries, citrus fruits ripen fully on the tree and do not ripen any more once picked. Keep them in the refrigerator for the longest life. Choose fruit that feels heavy for its size, with a thin, smooth skin. Avoid fruit with big marks or damp spots.

• Lemons are the citrus cooks reach for most. They are too sour to eat raw, which makes them ideal for flavoring desserts and sweets. The juice goes into many sauces, above all for fish, shellfish and poultry, and the zest is candied or used as a garnish. A useful trick: rub a sugar cube hard over the peel of any citrus fruit. The sugar pulls out much of the scented oil, and you can then crush or dissolve the cube into a recipe.
  ▶ Watch
• Limes are small, with thin skins from yellow-green to dark green. They are too sour to eat raw and often stand in for lemons. They are juiced, or used in cocktails, curries and desserts, and grated lime zest adds color and flavor. The key lime is a small, sour lime from South Florida, the base of key lime pie.
  ▶ Watch
• Oranges can be sweet or bitter. Valencia and navel (a seedless kind) are the best-known sweet oranges. Use the juice for drinks and sauces, and the flesh raw, in salads, in cooked desserts or as a garnish; grate or cut the zest into thin strips for sauces and garnish. Pick plump, heavy fruit with clean skin. A green rind is no problem: skin color depends on the weather and does not change the flavor inside.
• Blood oranges are small sweet oranges with a rough, reddish skin and flesh streaked deep red. They are mostly a winter fruit, eaten raw, juiced, or used in salads and sauces.
  ▶ Watch
• Bitter oranges, such as the Seville and the bergamot, are grown mainly for the oils in their zest. Bergamot oil flavors Earl Grey tea. Seville oil goes into orange liqueurs such as curaçao, and into orange flower water, and Seville oranges are made into marmalade and into sauces for meat and poultry.
  ▶ Watch
• Grapefruits are large, round and yellow, with a thick rind and sour flesh. They began in the 18th century as a cross between the orange and the pummelo. White-fleshed grapefruit gives the best juice; pink or ruby grapefruit is sweeter. Grapefruit is best raw, or sprinkled with brown sugar and broiled for a short time.
  ▶ Watch
• Tangerines, also called mandarins, are small and dark orange. The loose rind peels away easily from sweet, juicy, fragrant segments. They are mostly eaten raw, and canned ones are sold as mandarin oranges. Tangelos are a tangerine and grapefruit cross, about the size of a medium orange, with a swollen stem end and few or no seeds.
• Kumquats are tiny, oval and orange. The skin is soft and sweet and the flesh a little bitter, so you can eat them whole, raw or kept in syrup. They also go into jams and preserves.
  ▶ Watch

For the knife work of sectioning a grapefruit or taking off zest, see the earlier chapter on knife work. see chapter 4: Techniques for particular foods

18.2 Grapes, melons, pomes and exotics

Exotics

Better transport has made unusual fruits easier to find, though supply can still be patchy. Figs, persimmons, pomegranates, prickly pears, rhubarb and star fruit are now fairly common. Breadfruit, durian, feijoa and loquat still come mostly from specialist suppliers.

• Figs grow on ficus trees. They are small, soft and pear-shaped, very sweet, with a rich, moist flesh full of crunchy tiny seeds. Slice them into a salad or serve them beside prosciutto and other cured meats, or bake or poach them, or cook them into jams and compotes. Dark Mission figs have thin skins and small seeds. Among the light-skinned kinds, the White Adriatic is mostly dried or baked and the Kadota is all-purpose. The large, yellow Calimyrna, with big nutty seeds, is the most important home-grown fig in the United States and the best for eating fresh. Figs taste best fully ripened on the tree, but ripe figs are so soft they travel badly.
  ▶ Watch
• Gooseberries come in several farmed kinds. The European gooseberry is part of the currant family and grows on spiny bushes. Its berries are usually under 1 inch (2.5 cm) across, with a firm skin that may be green, gray-green, yellow or red, and a sour taste. They are eaten fresh, made into jellies, preserves and tarts, or served beside rich, fatty foods like goose or mackerel. The North American kinds are smaller and rounder and have less flavor.
• Cape gooseberries (also called physalis, ground cherries or poha) are no relation to other gooseberries. Each is about the size of a cherry, wrapped in a papery husk, with a waxy, bright orange skin. They taste a little like coconut and orange, but more sour. Eat them raw, make them into jam, or use them in desserts; fresh, they make a striking garnish.
  ▶ Watch
• Guava is small, oval or shaped like a pear, strongly scented, with mild, slightly gritty flesh. It makes excellent jams and preserves, and guava paste, a firm gel you can slice, is popular in Central America and the Caribbean. Guava ripens at room temperature and tastes best when it is a little soft.
  ▶ Watch
• Lychees (also spelled litchi) grow on a large tree that first grew in southern China and Southeast Asia. They are round to oval, red, and about 1 inch (2.5 cm) across. A tough skin covers juicy white flesh around one big seed; you eat neither the skin nor the seed. They are eaten fresh or juiced, and are easy to buy canned or dried.
• Rambutans are close cousins of the lychee, bright red and covered in long, soft spines, which earns them the name "hairy lychees". They darken as they age, so choose bright fruit with soft, fleshy spines.
• Mangosteens (no relation to mangoes) are about as big as a small orange. They have a hard, deep red-purple rind. Inside, the snow-white flesh sits in segments, juicy and slightly astringent. They ripen only on the tree and keep a short time, so they are usually eaten fresh.
  ▶ Watch
• Persimmons, also called kaki or Sharon fruit, are bright orange and shaped like an acorn. A ripe one is very soft, with a skin you can almost see through, and a jelly-like flesh that tastes of honey and plums. Peel them and remove any seeds. An under-ripe persimmon is close to inedible: it is strongly tannic and chalky. Refrigerate them only once they are fully ripe.
• Pomegranates came from Persia, now Iran. Under a hard pink-red shell, hundreds of small red seeds sit in juicy pulp, divided by a yellow membrane you do not eat. The seeds are sweet-sour and crunchy and make a bright garnish. Grenadine syrup is made from the concentrated juice. Choose heavy fruit that is not rock-hard, cracked or badly bruised; whole pomegranates keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.
  ▶ Watch
• Prickly pears, also called cactus pears or Barbary figs, are the berries of several cacti. Their thick skin carries small spines and almost invisible stinging hairs, so they must be peeled. The pink-red flesh is sweet and spongy, with small black seeds. Dice it raw, or purée it for jams, sauces, custards or sorbets, which it turns bright pink. Ripe ones keep a week or more in the refrigerator.
  ▶ Watch
• Rhubarb is a vegetable to a botanist but is cooked as a fruit. Only the pink-red stalks are eaten. The leaves are poisonous, because they are high in oxalic acid. The stalks are very sour and need a lot of sugar. Cinnamon, ginger, orange and strawberry suit rhubarb well, and it makes fine pies, cobblers, preserves and stews. Young stalks need no peeling. Choose crisp stalks without marks. Frozen rhubarb works well in pies, tarts and jams.
  ▶ Watch
• Star fruit, or carambola, has five ribs down its length, so a slice is shaped like a star. The waxy skin can be eaten, and it needs no peeling or seeding. It tastes mildly sweet, a little like plums. Slice it into fruit salads or use it as a garnish; unripe ones can go into stews or chutneys. A ripe star fruit is deep golden-yellow, with brown along the edges of the ribs and a full, flowery smell. Green ones ripen at room temperature and then keep up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

Grapes

Most of the world's grapes become wine, but cooks deal with table grapes, grown for eating. Grapes are berries that hang in large bunches on vines. They are sorted by color: "white" grapes are really green, and "black" grapes are really red. White grapes usually taste milder, with thinner skins and firmer flesh. Most of a grape's color and flavor is in its skin.

Grapes are mostly eaten raw, on their own or in fruit salads, or served with desserts and cheese. Choose firm, unmarked grapes held tightly to the stem. A dusty bloom on the skin comes from yeasts and means the grapes were picked recently. Wrinkles, or brown spots near the stem, mean they are past their best. Rinse and drain all grapes before you use them.

• Thompson Seedless is the most important table grape in trade: pale green, crisp and sweet. Many are sun-dried in California to make dark raisins. For golden raisins, the grapes are treated with sulfur dioxide so they do not brown, then dried by machine.
• Red Flame is a large, round, seedless grape with a slightly sour taste and patchy red color, second in importance only to Thompson Seedless.
• Concord, Ribier and Emperor are the main grapes with seeds, light red to deep black, all in season in autumn. Concord, one of the few grapes native to the Americas, is used mostly for juice and jelly.
  ▶ Watch
• Dried grapes go by three names: raisins (often from Thompson Seedless or Muscat), currants (from Black Corinth grapes, sold as Zante currants) and sultanas (from sultana grapes).
  ▶ Watch

Melons

Melons belong to the gourd family, with pumpkins and cucumbers. There are two broad kinds. Sweet melons, also called dessert melons, have a tan, green or yellow rind that is netted or ridged, and dense, scented flesh, with seeds in a hollow in the middle. Watermelons have a thick, dark green rind and crisp, watery flesh.

A melon is almost 90 percent water, so heat ruins it fast and turns it to mush. Serve melon sliced, perhaps with a squeeze of lemon or lime. It also suits fruit salads, and prosciutto or other rich cured meats. It can also be puréed into a sorbet or a cold soup that is never cooked.

Melons should ripen on the vine. Press the blossom end, the end opposite the stem: a ripe melon gives a little and springs back, and it smells strong. Avoid melons that are very soft or damp at the stem end. Ripe melons can go in the refrigerator, though they taste better at room temperature, and slightly under-ripe ones can sit at room temperature to build flavor and aroma.

Pomes

Apples grow in temperate places all over the world. You can eat them raw, or use them in breads, desserts and vegetable dishes, and they suit pork, poultry and game. Classic apple dishes often carry the name à la Normande. Apple juice, or cider, becomes drinks with and without alcohol, and cider vinegar.

There are hundreds of apple varieties, but only about 20 matter in trade in the United States. Most have creamy white, moist flesh under a thin yellow, green or red skin. They run from very sweet to very sour, and from crisp to soft and mealy.

Choosing an apple for cooking is about what you want at the end:

• In Europe, apples are split into eating apples and cooking apples. A cooking apple is one that falls apart into a purée when cooked. American apples are not sorted so strictly.
  ▶ Watch
• When the look of the slices matters, pick an apple that holds its shape.
  ▶ Watch
• Apples high in malic acid break down easily, so they suit applesauce and juice.

Apples are picked slightly under-ripe and kept in cold storage with very little oxygen until they are sold. That is why fresh apples are found all year, though their true season is autumn.

Buying and keeping apples:

• Look for firm fruit with smooth, unbroken skin and no soft spots or bruises.
• Throw out badly bruised or rotting apples at once: they give off a lot of ethylene gas, which makes the fruit around them spoil faster.
• Keep apples chilled for up to 6 weeks.
• Wash them just before use, peeled or not, to remove pesticide and any wax put on to make them shine.
• Sliced apples can also be dried, or frozen, often with added sugar or citric acid to slow spoilage.

Pears are an ancient tree fruit of temperate lands. Thousands of varieties are known, but only about a dozen matter in trade. Two of the best known:

• Anjou (Beurre d'Anjou): greenish-yellow skin, egg-shaped with a short neck, sweet and juicy. A red kind is also sold.
• Bartlett (Williams): thin yellow skin, bell-shaped, very sweet, buttery and juicy. A red kind is also sold.

Pears are eaten raw, baked or poached. They are very good with cheese, blue cheese above all, and in fruit salads, compotes and preserves. Pears do not ripen well on the tree, so they are picked firm and left to soften. Under-ripe pears can sit at room temperature. A ripe pear smells good and gives a little when you press gently near the stem. Choose pears with smooth, unbroken skin and the stem still on. Store and prepare them as you would apples.

Asian pears, also called Chinese pears or apple-pears, are a different species. They have the sweet juice of a pear with the round shape and crunch of an apple.

Quince looks like a big, lumpy yellow pear, hard and full of pips, with a lovely scent. It is too astringent to eat raw. Cooked with sugar, it turns sweet and pink. Quince goes into meat stews, jellies, marmalades and pies. It is high in pectin, so a little added to other fruit helps a jam set. Choose firm fruit with good yellow color; cut away small marks before cooking. Quince keeps up to a month in the refrigerator.

18.3 Stone fruit and tropical fruit

Stone fruit

Stone fruits, also called drupes, are apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches and plums. Each has a thin skin, soft flesh and a single hard, woody stone, or pit. Most came first from China and now grow in temperate climates everywhere.

Stone fruits bruise easily, travel badly and do not keep long. Do not wash them until you are ready to use them, because damp makes them spoil. They dry very well and are made into liqueurs and brandies.

• Apricots are small and round, with velvety skin from deep yellow to bright orange around a dark, almond-shaped pit. Eat them raw, or poach, stew, bake or candy them. They suit compotes, savory sauces for meat and poultry, quick breads and tarts, and they purée well for sauces, jams, custards and mousses. Choose plump, firm, well-shaped fruit, never greenish-yellow or mushy. They last several days in the refrigerator but taste best at room temperature. Canned apricots are usually a fair stand-in. Dried apricots and apricot juice, called nectar, are easy to find.
• Sweet cherries are round or shaped like a heart, roughly 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide, with skin from yellow to almost black. The dark red Bing is the favorite; Royal Ann and Rainier, which are yellow-red, are found in some places. Sweet cherries are sold fresh, turned into maraschino cherries, or candied for baked goods. Cherries do not ripen after picking. Choose firm, plump cherries with green stems and no brown spots near the stem; a dry or brown stem means the cherry is not fresh. Once the stem comes off, the cherry spoils fast. Refrigerate them, and wash them only when you are about to use them.
• Sour cherries, such as Montmorency and Morello, are light to dark red and so sharp they are seldom eaten raw. Most are canned, frozen, or cooked with sugar and a starch such as cornstarch or tapioca to make pie filling. Sweet and sour cherries are both sold dried.
• Peaches and nectarines are one fruit with two skins: a peach is fuzzy, a nectarine smooth. Inside, both are sweet and juicy, white to pale orange, and one can usually replace the other in a recipe. Use them raw or in tarts and pastries, jams, chutneys, preserves and savory relishes; they suit Asian and Indian dishes well. The skin can be eaten, but peaches are usually peeled, and they peel easily after a quick blanch.
  ▶ Watch
• Plums are round to oval, anywhere from tiny up to 3 inches (7.5 cm) wide, with a thin skin that may be green, red, yellow or blue-purple. Eat them raw, bake or poach them, or put them in pies, cobblers, tarts, jams, salads and compotes. Choose plump, smooth, unmarked fruit that gives to gentle pressure, though green and yellow kinds stay firm. Avoid damp brown spots near the stem. Plums can ripen at room temperature and then go into the refrigerator.

Peaches and nectarines come in two types. In a freestone, the flesh comes away from the pit easily, so these are the ones for eating raw. In a clingstone, the flesh holds tight to the pit; clingstones hold together better in cooking, and most canned peaches and nectarines are clingstones.

To choose peaches and nectarines, smell them and look at the color: you want a good aroma, an overall cream, yellow or yellow-orange color, and smooth skin with no marks. Red patches do not mean ripeness. A green skin means the fruit was picked too early and never will ripen. After picking, peaches and nectarines get softer, but no sweeter.

Tropical fruit

Tropical fruits come from hot tropical and subtropical lands, and fast shipping now makes most of them easy to find in the United States. All of them can be eaten raw. Their flavors suit one another and suit rich or spicy dishes of meat, fish and poultry.

Bananas are in fact the berries of a big tropical herb. They grow in bunches called hands. A common yellow banana measures between 7 and 9 inches (17.5 and 22.5 cm), with soft, sweet, sticky flesh inside a skin you do not eat. Baby bananas, 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12.5 cm) long with yellow or red skin, are denser and sweeter, and their small size suits many desserts.

Bananas are always picked green, because letting them yellow on the plant spoils their texture and flavor. A green banana is hard, dry and starchy, but it ripens after picking, so buying green is fine if there is time. Let bananas ripen at room temperature. A ripe one is yellow with brown flecks and no green at the tip. As it ages, the peel darkens and the starch turns to sugar, so it gets sweeter. Avoid big brown bruises and a gray tinge, which is a sign of cold damage. Eat ripe bananas raw or in salads; save bruised or over-ripe ones for breads and muffins. Cherry, cinnamon, ginger, honey and chocolate all go well with banana.

Plantains, or cooking bananas, are bigger and less sweet than common bananas. Tropical cooks often treat them as a starchy vegetable.

Dates grow on the date palm. Each is between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 and 5 cm) in length, golden to dark brown, with a paper-thin skin and one grooved seed. A date looks dried but is a fresh fruit, sticky-sweet and almost candied. Dates add flavor and moisture to breads, muffins, cookies and tarts, and can be stuffed with meat or cheese to serve as an appetizer. Choose plump, glossy, moist dates. They are sold pitted (whole, chopped or pressed for baking) or whole with the pit, and date juice is used as a sweetener.

Kiwis, or Chinese gooseberries, are roughly as big as a large egg. They have thin, fuzzy brown skin and bright green flesh around a white core ringed with tiny black seeds. They are sweet but a little bland. Use them raw: peeled and eaten, sliced into salads, or as a garnish. Heat makes them fall apart, so they are not for cooking, but they suit glazed fruit tarts and can be puréed for sorbets, sauces and mousses.

Mangoes are oval or kidney-shaped and weigh 6 ounces to 1 pound (180 to 500 g). The thin, tough skin is yellow to orange-red, patched with other colors, and the green fades as the fruit ripens. The juicy orange flesh clings to a big, flat pit. The flavor is sweet and spicy with a sour edge. Purée mango for drinks and sauces, or slice or cube it for salads, pickles, chutneys and desserts; it goes well with curry and barbecued meat. Choose firm, well-colored fruit with no marks. A ripe mango smells good and is neither too soft nor shriveled. Ripen it fully at room temperature; after that it keeps a week at most in the refrigerator.

Papayas look like large greenish-yellow pears and weigh 1 to 2 pounds (500 to 1000 g). Cut in half, a papaya looks like a melon, with golden to pinkish flesh and a middle full of round, silver-black seeds. The seeds can be eaten; they are peppery and a little crunchy, and they can garnish fruit salads or flavor salsas and compotes. Ripe papaya is good raw with just a squeeze of lemon or lime, or puréed for sauces, cold soups and sorbets. Green papaya goes into pickles and chutneys, or is baked or stewed with meat or poultry. To judge ripeness, look at color more than softness: the more yellow and the less green, the riper. Hold papayas at room temperature until fully ripe, then refrigerate up to 1 week.

Passion fruits are about the size and shape of a large hen's egg, with a hard purple shell around orange-yellow pulp and large black seeds you can eat. The flavor is sweet, rich and citrus-like, and the pulp goes into custards, sauces and ice creams. Choose heavy fruit with a dark, wrinkled skin and a strong smell; ripen at room temperature if needed, then refrigerate. Bottled or frozen purée gives a strong, true flavor.

Pineapples are covered in rough brown "eyes" that make them look like a pinecone. The pale yellow flesh is sweet and very juicy around a woody core, which can be eaten but is too tough for most uses. Most weigh about 2 pounds (1 kg). Eat pineapple raw, or bake or grill slices to serve with pork or ham; Southeast Asian cooks use it in curries, soups and stews. A pineapple does not ripen after it is picked, so it must stay on the plant until fully ripe, and then it spoils fast. Choose heavy fruit with a strong, sweet smell and rich color, without dry leaves or soft spots, and use it as soon as you can.

Fruit enzymes, gelatin and meat

Enzyme tenderizers for meat, and how gelatin sets, are covered in earlier chapters. see chapter 9: Ways to tenderize see chapter 7: Gelatin, agar and pectin

18.4 Choosing, buying and storing fruit

What fruit gives you

Most fruit is very nutritious. It is mostly water, usually 75 to 95 percent, with little protein or fat, so it is low in calories. It is a fine source of fiber, and the sugar in ripe fruit gives energy. Citrus, melons and strawberries are rich in vitamin C, though cooking or processing can destroy it. Apricots, mangoes and kiwis, with their deep yellow or green color, give plenty of vitamin A, and bananas, raisins and figs give potassium.

Fresh fruit and its grades

"Fresh" means the fruit has not been canned, frozen or dried. It may be ripe or not, depending on when it was picked and how it was kept. To serve fruit well and at the right cost, think about four things when you buy:

• the size of each piece;
• its grade or quality;
• how ripe it is when it arrives;
• its food value.

In the United States, fresh fruit sold wholesale may be graded under a voluntary USDA program. There are four grades, best first:

• U.S. Fancy
• U.S. No. 1
• U.S. No. 2
• U.S. No. 3

The grades are based on size, even shape, color and texture, and on freedom from defects. Most fruit bought for food service is U.S. Fancy. Lower grades are fine for sauces, jams, jellies and preserves.

How fruit ripens

As a fruit ripens, it reaches full size, its flesh softens and its color changes. Its acid drops, so it tastes less sour, and its starch turns into the sugars fructose and glucose, which bring sweetness, flavor and aroma. These changes do not stop at the peak. They carry on, and the fruit's texture and flavor decline until it spoils.

So when you buy matters as much as what you buy:

• Some fruits, such as figs and pineapples, ripen only on the plant. Buy them ripe; picked early, they never reach full flavor or texture.
• Others, such as bananas and pears, keep ripening after picking, so you can buy them unripe.
  ▶ Watch
• Cold slows ripening. Fruit breathes, taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide; chilling slows that breathing, and so slows the change from starch to sugar. Warmth speeds it up.
  ▶ Watch
• Ripening fruit gives off ethylene, a gas with no color or smell, and ethylene makes most fruit ripen faster. The biggest sources are apples, tomatoes, melons and bananas, so keep them away from delicate fruit and vegetables, greens above all. Fruit picked unripe for shipping may be given ethylene to ripen it just before sale.
  ▶ Watch
• To make ripe fruit last a day or two longer, keep it apart from other fruit and well chilled.
  ▶ Watch
• Cooked or processed fruit does not ripen any further, though cooking may soften it or add flavor.

Buying by the case

Fresh fruit is sold by weight or by count, in crates, bushels, cartons, cases, lugs or flats. How much a container holds depends on the fruit, the supplier and where it was packed; Texas citrus, for example, comes in cartons holding 7/10 of a bushel. Sometimes you must state the size of the fruit: a 30-pound case of lemons may hold 96, 112 or 144 lemons, depending on how big they are.

Some fruit, especially melons, pineapples, peaches and berries, can be bought already trimmed, cleaned, peeled or cut, sometimes with sugar or preservatives, in bulk containers. It is consistent and saves a lot of labor, but it may cost more than whole fruit, and the processing can take something from its flavor, freshness and food value.

Storing fresh fruit

The general rules for the refrigerator, the freezer, the dry store and stock rotation are in the food safety chapter. see chapter 2: Why storage matters

Most produce is refrigerated between 2 and 4°C (36 and 39°F), though bananas are one of the exceptions. These storage rules apply to fruit:

• Do not keep soft fruit long. Buy it as you need it and hold very little.
• Unripe fruit ripens in a storeroom at 10 to 15°C (50 to 59°F), and much more slowly in the refrigerator. To make fruit ripen faster, keep it at room temperature.
  ▶ Watch
• Bananas turn black quickly in the refrigerator, so keep them at 10 to 15°C (50 to 59°F).
• Take rotting fruit out of the case before storing and whenever you rotate stock. One bad piece can set off a chain reaction that spoils a whole case.
• Signs that fruit is going off: it softens, darkens and soon rots, and mold may appear. Mold shows as blue-green, hair-like growth and likes fruit kept warm, dark and a little damp. Yeasts make fruit ferment by turning its sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Preserved fruit

Preserving keeps fruit in nearly fresh form for longer. The methods are irradiation, acidulation, canning, freezing and drying. All but drying leave the texture and flavor much as they were. Cooked fruit can also be canned or frozen.

Irradiated fruit has been treated with ionizing radiation to kill parasites, insects and bacteria. It also ripens more slowly, with no clear change to flavor or texture. Such fruit must be labeled "treated with radiation" or "treated by irradiation", or carry the right symbol.

Acidulation slows browning. Cut apples, pears, bananas and peaches turn brown. People blame the air, but the cause is a reaction driven by enzymes, called enzymatic browning. Dipping the cut fruit in an acid juice, such as lemon or orange, holds it back. Do not soak fruit in water or in water with lemon juice (acidulated water): without enough salt or sugar the fruit goes mushy, and with enough, the flavor changes.

Canned fruit. Almost any fruit cans well; pineapple and peaches sell the most. The fruit is sealed in a can and heated for a set time. The heat kills spoilage microbes and softens most fruit, and the sealed can keeps air out. Because no oxygen is present during heating, canning does little to vitamins A, B, C and D. Know the pack you are buying:

• Solid pack: little or no water added; the only liquid is the fruit's own juice.
• Water pack: water or juice added, which you must allow for when working out cost.
• Syrup pack: light, medium or heavy sugar syrup added; allow for it in the cost, and for the extra sweetness in the recipe.

Once a can is opened, move what is left into a proper storage container and refrigerate it. Open and throw away any can that bulges. Opened cans of food such as meat and vegetables count as potentially hazardous foods, along with any fruit that has been cooked or heat-treated.

Frozen fruit. Freezing stops most of the microbes that spoil fruit and keeps the nutrients. Because fruit is so watery, though, ice crystals form and burst the cell walls, which can change how it looks and feels. Quick freezing makes fewer crystals. Much fruit, especially berries and apple and pear slices, is now IQF, individually quick-frozen, using blasts of cold air, cold plates, liquid nitrogen or similar. Berries are frozen whole; stone fruits are generally peeled, stoned and cut into slices first. Fruit also comes frozen in sugar syrup, which adds flavor and stops browning, and as frozen purée.

In the United States, frozen fruit has three grades. The top is U.S. Grade A, also called Fancy. Next is U.S. Grade B, called Choice or Extra Standard. Last is U.S. Grade C, called Standard. Packers may use a grade name without an inspection if the fruit meets that grade's standard.

Storing frozen fruit:

• Store frozen food at −18°C (0°F) or colder.
• Fruit that arrives frozen keeps for months if it is well wrapped.
• The wrapping should be moisture-proof and the temperature steady, because ups and downs cause freezer burn.
  ▶ Watch
• Freezing fresh fruit in your own kitchen takes time and may cost too much, and fruit not properly prepared for the freezer keeps badly.
  ▶ Watch

Do not thaw frozen blueberries or blackberries before you fold them into a batter. Their juice runs and stains the batter.

Dried fruit. Drying is the oldest way of keeping fruit, used for more than 5000 years. Taking out most of the water concentrates the flavor and sugar and makes the fruit keep much longer. The fruits dried most often are apricots, figs, plums (as prunes) and grapes (as raisins, sultanas and currants). Fruit may be dried slowly in the sun or quickly in hot, dry air. It keeps 16 to 26 percent of its moisture, which is why it stays soft, and it is often treated with sulfur dioxide to stop browning and make it last longer.

Eat dried fruit as it is, add it to cereals and salads, bake it into muffins, breads, pies and tarts, stew it for chutneys and compotes, or use it to stuff roast meat and poultry. To soften it, steep it for a short while in something hot: water, wine, rum or brandy; some kinds should be simmered in a little water. Store dried fruit in airtight containers somewhere dry and cool, out of the sun. Air and damp together can make it go moldy.

Juice

Juice is a drink on its own, a mixer, and the liquid in many recipes. There are two ways to get it out. Juicy fruit such as citrus is pressed, by hand or with a reamer, a ridged cone pushed against the cut fruit. Less juicy fruit and vegetables, such as apples, carrots and beets, go through a blender or an electric extractor, which grinds the fruit and spins the juice away from the pulp. Strain all juice to take out seeds, pulp and fiber.

Mixed juices can be very good. Try orange with pineapple or papaya, cranberry with apple, or tangerine with strawberry. Watch the color, though. Yellow and orange juices mix safely, but juices with red and blue pigments, called flavonoids, from Concord grapes, cherries, strawberries, raspberries or blueberries, can turn an ugly color. A little lemon juice keeps the reds and blues true.

18.5 Cooking fruit; acid, heat and color

Most fruit is served raw, but much of it can also be cooked. Fruit can be grilled or broiled, baked, sautéed, deep-fried, poached, simmered, or preserved.

Sugar, acid and alkali

Fruit goes soft very quickly under heat, and once it is mushy it cannot be undone. Three things change how fast that happens:

• Sugar firms fruit. Cooked with sugar, the fruit slowly takes the sugar into its cells and holds its shape better. The cost is time: fruit poached in a sugar syrup takes longer to become tender.
• Acid, lemon juice above all, also helps fruit keep its structure.
• Alkali, such as baking soda, does the reverse: the cells break down faster and the fruit turns to mush.

Knowing when it is done

Fruits react to heat in so many ways that no single test fits them all; judge each one in its own recipe. As a rule, cooked fruit is done when it is just tender: a fork or the point of a small knife slides in. Fruit simmered for a compote should be softer, cooked until it is just about to fall apart. Residual heat keeps cooking fruit after it leaves the pan, so stop a little early. Trust your eyes, hands, nose and tongue, not the clock.

Broiling and grilling

Grill or broil fruit only long enough to caramelize its sugar, and do it fast, before the fruit breaks down. Pineapples, apples, grapefruits, bananas, persimmons and peaches all work. Cut them into slices, chunks or halves, and top them with sugar or honey, which adds flavor and helps them brown; liqueur, lemon juice, cinnamon or ginger add more. Use an oiled sheet pan or broiler platter, or a clean grate, or thread the pieces on skewers. Cook at high heat, and turn only thick slices. Serve the fruit on its own, beside meat, fish or poultry, or over ice cream or custard.

For grills and broilers in general, see the chapter on dry heat. see chapter 8: Fitting the method to the food

Baking

Most pomes, stone fruits and tropical fruits make good hot desserts when baked. Wash them and peel, core or pit them first. Choose fruit that is ripe but still firm, add sugar or flavorings, wrap it in pastry if the recipe asks, and bake it with no cover in a moderate oven until it is tender or nicely browned. Apples and pears bake especially well whole, because their skin keeps the moisture and flavor in, and once cored they can be filled with sweet or savory stuffings. Mixing fruits balances sweet and sour: try strawberries with rhubarb, or apples with plums.

Several baked desserts are simply fruit with a topping:

• a cobbler has a crust on top;
  ▶ Watch
• a buckle has a batter.
  ▶ Watch

Fruit, sometimes poached first, can also be baked inside puff pastry, flaky dough or phyllo for a more elegant dessert.

A clafoutis is a French baked dessert: fruit, by tradition black cherries, laid in a buttered dish under a thick batter like a flan. Made with sliced pears (firm, ripe Anjou) or apples (Granny Smith), it bakes at 375°F for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until it is firm in the center and lightly golden. For baked apples, Gala apples are cored with a melon baller or knife, leaving the bottom whole so the filling cannot leak out, then filled and baked at 350°F for about 45 to 50 minutes.

Sautéing

A quick sauté in butter and sugar, with spices or liqueur if you like, gives fruit a rich, syrupy taste. Good fruits for it include apples, pears, bananas, pineapples and cherries. Peel, core and seed them as needed, and cut them into even pieces. Melt the fat in a hot pan, add the fruit and any flavorings, and cook fast over high heat. Do not crowd the pan, or the fruit stews in its own juice.

For dessert, the sugar becomes a caramel glaze or syrup, and the fruit fills crêpes or tops sponge cake or ice cream. Liquor may be added and set alight in front of the guests; this is called flambé. For savory dishes, onions, shallots or garlic go in too. Choose the fat to suit the dish; butter and bacon fat are usual.

Bananas Foster is the classic flambé. It was created in 1951 by the chef of Brennan's in New Orleans for a regular named Richard Foster.

• Cook butter, brown sugar and cinnamon in a pan until the sugar melts.
• Add banana liqueur and halved bananas.
  ▶ Watch
• When the bananas soften and begin to brown, add dark rum, heat it and light it.
• Serve the bananas and sauce over vanilla ice cream.

Sautéing in general is taught in the chapter on dry heat. see chapter 8: Sauté and pan-frying

Deep-frying

Few fruits deep-fry well. Apples, bananas, pears, pineapples and firm peaches do, in or under a batter. Peel, core and seed them and cut them into even slices or chunks. Pat them dry with paper towel if needed so the coating sticks.

A fritter is a small piece of food, such as diced fruit, held together in a thick batter and fried. Frying is so quick that the main ingredient is often cooked first. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into fat at 350°F (180°C) and let them float free as they fry. They are done when golden brown outside and moist but set inside. Drain them over the fryer, then on paper or a rack, and serve them hot, or keep them under a heat lamp.

Frying and fryer safety are covered in the chapter on dry heat. see chapter 8: How much fat

Poaching

Poaching is one of the most popular ways to cook fruit. It softens the fruit and soaks it with flavor from spices or wine. The liquid may be water, wine, liquor or sugar syrup. Fruit poaches at a low heat, 185°F (85°C), so it softens slowly; the bubbling of hotter liquid would damage it.

• Peel, core and slice the fruit.
  ▶ Watch
• In a deep, nonreactive pan, mix the liquid with sugar, spices, citrus zest or whatever the recipe asks.
  ▶ Watch
• Put the fruit in the liquid and lay a circle of parchment paper on top to keep it under.
  ▶ Watch
• Heat it over medium-high until it boils, then lower the heat at once and let it simmer gently.
  ▶ Watch
• Cook until a small knife slips in easily. The time depends on the fruit, how ripe it is, and the liquid.

Let the fruit cool in its liquid. Most poaching liquids can be used again, and one with enough sugar can be boiled down into a sauce or glaze for the fruit. Poached fruit is served hot or cold, in tarts and pastries, or beside meat and poultry.

Poaching in general is taught in the chapter on moist heat. see chapter 9: What poaching is

Simmering and stewing

Stewed fruit and compotes are simmered. Fresh, frozen, canned and dried fruit all work. Peel, core, pit and slice the fruit, bring it to a simmer in water, wine or just its own juice, and cook until tender. Add sugar or other sweetening as the recipe says. Serve it warm or chilled: to start a meal, as dessert, or beside meat or poultry.

An apple compote shows the pattern. Small dice of tart apple cook covered over low heat with lemon juice, a little brandy, sugar and cinnamon, stirred now and then, for about 30 minutes, until tender. It is then cooled completely.

Preserving: jams and jellies

Fruit can be kept with sugar if the mixture of fruit and sugar is boiled down until microbes cannot spoil it. The sugar slows microbes but does not kill them.

All fruit contains some pectin, and pectin can set cooked fruit into a soft solid, a gel. A fruit gel needs four things in the right balance: the fruit, sugar, pectin, and an acid, most often lemon juice. Fruit low in pectin, such as strawberries, needs pectin added, either from a high-pectin fruit such as apples or quince, or from a packet. Good-quality fruit that does not look its best is ideal for gels.

How pectin sets is explained in the chapter on what heat does to food. see chapter 7: Gelatin, agar and pectin

Color: pigments, acid and browning

The color of a fruit or vegetable comes from four groups of pigments: carotenoids, chlorophyll, anthoxanthins and anthocyanins. To see what heat and pH do to them, boil vegetables from each pigment group until crisp-tender four ways:

• in plain water with the lid on;
• in plain water with the lid off;
• in water with 1 teaspoon of vinegar (an acid);
• in water with ½ teaspoon of baking soda (a base).

Then compare color and texture, and the color left in the cooking water.

For fruit, the lesson that matters most is texture: acid keeps fruit firm, while baking soda turns it to mush.

Water also moves in and out of fruit and vegetables by osmosis. It flows from where there is more free water to where more of the water is held by dissolved substances, such as salt or sugar. Sugar sprinkled on cut fruit draws out its juice in just this way. To see it at work, keep cucumber slices for one hour in plain water, in salt water, and under dry salt.

Safety for cooked fruit

Any fruit that has been cooked or heat-treated is a potentially hazardous food. So poached fruit, compotes and pie fillings come under the same time and temperature rules as other such foods. The danger zone, where most harmful bacteria grow and multiply, runs from 4 to 60°C (40 to 140°F).

The cooling, holding and storage rules for such foods are in the food safety chapter. see chapter 2: Heat: cooling, holding and reheating