What Kind of Fruit Is It? Botanical Types in the Kitchen

A fruit eaten as a vegetable, in the words of its own page. Its likely wild ancestor is native to Chile, Peru and Ecuador, and it carries the savory flavor that anchors pasta sauces, gazpacho, salsa and curries.

Its page states that by botanical definition the eggplant is itself a berry, even though cooks treat it as a vegetable. It is kin to the tomato, chili pepper and potato, yet it originated in Eurasia while those originated in the Americas.

A creeping vine of the gourd family whose cylindrical to spherical fruits are used as culinary vegetables. It originated in Asia and has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years, so a plain salad ingredient is a long-farmed fruit.

The peach is a deciduous tree of the genus Prunus, the genus that also holds the cherry, apricot, almond and plum, so it opens a run of stone-fruit relatives. Its page records domestication in China, with a specific name that reflects its cultivation in Persia, and a smooth-skinned variety sold commercially as the nectarine.

The page names the cherry plainly as a fleshy stone fruit, known botanically as a drupe. Commercial fruit comes chiefly from the sweet cherry Prunus avium and the sour cherry Prunus cerasus.

The stone fruit turned inside out: the almond fruit is a drupe with an outer hull and a hard shell around the seed, and the page states that the seed is not a true nut. It is grouped with the peach in the subgenus Amygdalus, and domesticated almonds appear in the Early Bronze Age.

Botanically not a true berry but an aggregate accessory fruit. Each apparent seed on the outside is actually a separate small fruit called an achene, with a seed inside.

The cashew nut hangs from the cashew apple, a light reddish to yellow accessory fruit that is also eaten. The page warns that the shell and raw seed are toxic, so the nut is edible only once shelled and roasted or steamed.

The last stop shows a fruit made from many flowers. On the plant, individual flowers fuse, once unpollinated, to form the single multiple fruit, a native of South America that Europe met in the 17th century.