this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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To me arguing over which fruit belongs in which category is a prime example of people arguing over shadows in Plato's cave. Not that it's a waste of time or anything but sometimes people act like tomatoes won't grow if you call them vegetables. Like at the end of the day it's just humans developing a system to make sense of nature rather than discovering an inherent, pre-existing system.
The core of the matter is that we have multiple, mutually incompatible schemes sharing in part the same terminology. Biology is not cooking, both fields care about vastly different things thus the categorisation scheme is different, that's the end of it. Culinarily, tomatoes have too much umami to be fruit. Botanically peppermint is an aromatic, I recommend you not put any into your soffritto.
"Botanically" "culinary" "terminology" "biology" and then you say umami seriously. Which is entirely made up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33580387/
Oh, this is actually a perfect example of the arbitreity of mapping systems!
A looong time ago on reddit, I got into an argument with someone who was doing that thing where you confuse the map for the object itself. We were mostly talking about the chemistry table. But anyway, he just could not see how a change in motivation, that is what the map designer finds useful, could change how the map is arranged.
I mean, I don't think this would convince him: he would just say the culinary version isn't real. But still, I really like it.
You never had tomato pie? It would likely change your idea of what too much savoriness is.
I haven't but that sounds like a pie not a cake. A meal, not a dessert.
Well, not all pies are desserts for sure, but a tomato pie is, unless you deviate from the usual recipes.
Besides, you didn't say that a dessert has to be a cake.
There's also tomato jams, compote, and you can do a tomato cake mind you, a tomato cake is really more like banana bread, where it's a flavoring more than the star of the show.
Point is that tomatoes can definitely serve in the same role as "fruit", just like some things that are sweeter can be used in savory dishes.
It's about the preparation, not the ingredient. I mean, look at bacon jam. Not a dessert, but it's a savory and sweet spread that's used in the same was as fruit based jams. Onion jam is in the same range (and, as a side note, there's also onion and tomato pie which is more of a savory dish than a dessert, despite being fairly sweet anyway).
From a culinary standpoint, there are few ingredients that are fully excluded from dessert territory by virtue of having strong savory taste. There's also not many excluded from entrees purely because they're sweet. It's all a wonderful spectrum of sweet and savory
I want my bananas to be the star of the bread show.
But to be fair, I am a horny slut for bananas.
I should look up some tomato stuff; I've never even heard of these things.
Banana bread may be the best baked good in human history.
I agree with what you mean in kind of a broad-strokes way, but as individuals our subjective experiences of flavors can vary pretty wildly. There's genetics, neurology, age, and habit/experience that influence our taste in terms of actually sensing the chemicals. Then there's what we see, taste, and smell just prior or during tasting that severely impact our interpretation of that chemical sense.
I totally agree. It is completely nonsense to say. In other languages it is different. I just know some Spanish, but they don't have a word for berries or nuts, it is all just fruit. (Forrest fruit for berries or dried fruit for nuts) but they don't call potatoes vegetables, but "tuberculo". Interesting difference, which i guess is because they have another climate and other plants.
We do just call it a vegetable in my language.
Bayas y nueces... Tubérculo is closer to the botanical definition because it is a tuber (storage organ) and not a fruit (like most vegetables). And I would think that tubérculo could be any tuber vegetable, not just papas/patatas. Things like ñame or otoe are called tubérculo también.
Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that nuez would only refer to walnut. And that an almond would not be a nuez.
Is it a country specific thing because I usually see frutos del bosque in Spain?
I guess things can have multiple names, too. In German you would also say WaldfrĂĽchte (forest fruits) to mixed berries, but they are still Beeren (berries) as well. If you search for "postre de bayas" or "pastel de bayas" many recipes pop up. And sure, Spanish is obviously a diverse language with the divide between Spanish from Spain and from Latin America.
Disclaimer: I'm part of the scientific bubble so that's why I may here more terms that are botanical in Spanish ;)
What about nuez?