I'm back in San Francisco and have a new late-summer obsession: the lemon cucumber. In the current climate of multiculturalism and fusion, it may seem a little trendy to be enamored of a piece of produce that boasts the vaguely exotic yet familiar allure of the hybrid, the indeterminate, the mestizo, but this fruit masquerading as a vegetable disguised as a fruit (a kind of double drag, F to V to F) has been lurking about farmers markets since 1894. I found these little guys at the Noe Valley Farmers market and also saw them at the Ferry Building. My friend Zoe first suggested them to me after she saw them in Israel this summer.
Unlike the pluot or aprium, which are true cross-bred composites of separate fruits, this apple-cheeked salad stuffer is indeed a cucumber that merely resembles a brightly sour lemon and is actually slightly sweeter than other cucumbers. Like its relatives, the gourd and the squash, the cucumber is classified as a fruit for having enclosed seeds and developing from a flower but is associated with vegetables for its more neutral flavor and use in savory dishes (thanks Wikipedia!).
A question that has come up often since we started this blog is, "What exactly is a vegetable?" and I was reluctant to investigate the answer for fear that it would limit the specimens I could honestly post on the site without feeling self-indulgent. But the doors have been thrown wide open thanks again to my favorite unofficial Wiki-research site (our backroom team of Weird Vegetable fact-checkers are falling off their swivel chairs in horror), which informs us that "the term 'vegetable' generally means the edible parts of plants" and that the "definition of the word is traditional rather than scientific," based more on cultural associations, culinary uses, and food retailing, making its usage "somewhat arbitrary and subjective." So there. Anything edible from a plant goes. Viva la Vegetable!
I'm fine with traditional definitions, rather than scientific -- according to the scientific definition, wheat is a fruit, so clearly that definition isn't helping much -- but still: what do you mean by "the edible parts of plants"? I mean, how is that not everything? What's a blackberry? Or is the berry not "part" of a "plant" somehow? And if so, the traditional definition might not help us much either. Perhaps it's time for an exclusive wv.blgspt.com definition.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I'm just misunderstanding. I'm in the countryside and the sun in shining in my eyes.
Dear e h,
ReplyDeleteI am warmed by the fervence of your desire for a more enlightened relationship to the world of produce. I think one conclusion we can come to is that definitions are always imperfect contingencies that help us navigate the world and its many communities but only up to a certain point, after which blind adherence to a prescribed set of categories seems silly, and perhaps even fascist in the worst of cases.
In my rube-like understanding, a berry can be considered as both a fruit *and* a vegetable, fruits being an exclusive subset of the more democratic vegetable universe, which embraces all the various misfits and rag-tag hangers-on that can be considered both edible and plant. So if some poor seed pod or succulent is feeling left out, all you have to do is eat it to get the little guy into the club.
I wish I were in the countryside right now, though the city sun is still shining in my eyes.
Yours in vegetable harmony,
Katrina
On one hand, I applaud your rejection of empty distinctions and fascist prescriptions. On other other, your apparent compromise is actually a thinly disguised grab at vegetabolic hegemony. Fruits are but a subset of a vegetable universe? Tell that to my juicy peach. Who's to say it isn't the other way around -- your carrots and cukes are among the fruit of the earth?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I propose instead the creation of a formula integrating the relevant characteristics, no one feature determinant in itself but as a whole generating a placement on the f vs v spectrum. For example: q = (2x + y) * 1/2, where x is the traditional societal understanding, y the scientific definition (seeds and whatnot), and q is a fruit/vegetable quotient. The formula needs lots of refinement, of course, but isn't that what blogs are for?
I think my head just exploded in a spray of watermelon seeds.
ReplyDeleteWould like to paint before tasting them;-)
ReplyDelete[url=http://rastimores.net/][img]http://akreoplastoes.net/img-add/euro2.jpg[/img][/url]
ReplyDelete[b]softwares shops, [url=http://akreoplastoes.net/]windows xp patches[/url]
[url=http://akreoplastoes.net/][/url] cheap copy of microsoft office cheapest place to buy software
Mac FileMaker [url=http://rastimores.net/]office 2000 "software[/url] order pro software
[url=http://akreoplastoes.net/]software for grocery store[/url] adobe creative suite 3 cs3 design premium student discounts
[url=http://rastimores.net/]www macromedia software[/url] educators discount software
cheap software uk [url=http://rastimores.net/]teachers discount software[/url][/b]
Hi! Just to let you know I linked to your blog from my blog as I was trying to find out if my childhood encounter with lemon cucumbers on a family trip to the bay area was true...thank you for finally confirming this for me!
ReplyDeletehttp://thegameofyou.blogspot.com/2010/04/lombard-love-and-lemon-cucumbers.html
Nice post, lemon cucumbers very much deserve publicity - I tried them once and was hooked. This summer Im planning on having a garden full of them to keep up with me!
ReplyDeleteHey all. I have a friend who is a docent at a zoo and we use elephant/giraffe/rhino poop to fertilize our gardens. For the last few years we have done this, and anything fertilized grows lemon cucumber plants out of it like crazy. But the zoo only feeds normal cucumbers to the animals. Any ideas how this can be? The zookeepers and us have been stumped.
ReplyDeleteWait, you mean you never planted any lemon cucumber seeds and so lemon cucumbers just sprout on top of whatever it is you are fertilizing? I have no explanation, other than that a weird vegetable enthusiast is working at the zoo and snuck in some l-c's as a special treat for these most noble of land mammals.
ReplyDeleteLemon cucumbers and elephant poop - explanation would be that "normal" cucumbers were hybridised from the lemon cucumber or the lemon cucumber genes are dominant, so when the hybrid produces seeds, these revert back - make any sense?
ReplyDeletethe first line of the cucumber wiki says The cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a widely cultivated plant in the gourd family Cucurbitaceae. It is a creeping vine which bears cylindrical edible fruit when ripe.
ReplyDeleteWhat does it bear when ripe? Fruit.
fruit as a definition:
2.
the developed ovary of a seed plant with its contents and accessory parts, as the pea pod, nut, tomato, or pineapple. the product of a plant with seeds that is a result of a pollinated plant ovary.
A fruit starts from the flowers or ovaries of a plant. All of the rest of the plant is a vegetable. A vegetable is something that vegetates. A vegetable is a leaf. If it a part of the plant is a result of a pollinated ovary or flower such as a tomato, cucumber, pumpkin, strawberry, zucchini, then it is a fruit. The leaves of those plants are vegetables. Spinach, lettuce, kale are examples of vegetables. Potatoes, carrots, and onions don't exactly qualify for vegetables because they don't vegetate. They are simply roots/tubers. Hope this helps!
These look like "phut", a common rural vegetable in North India.
ReplyDeleteI thought it would have been sour.
ReplyDeleteI have successfully grown lemon cukes on and off for the last 5 years. This year I planted them in my raised bed and they are going nuts! Ready to pick the first large lemon-shaped fruit in a day or two.
ReplyDeleteI was curious about the origins of this peculiar and oh-so-effing delicious fruit and came upon your blog. Nice! I also came across an interesting article by an R.W. Robinson of Cornell Hort. Department.
The report is filled with lots of genetic info but also has some interesting historical info about this interesting cuke. One fascinating fact: "Its andromonoecious sex expression, with male and female elements in the same blossom, results in more natural self pollination than that of monoecious cucumbers which have the sexes in separate flowers."
Translation: it's a much more effective form of pollination. Having both male and female elements in the same flower greatly increases the likelihood and speed of fertilization and fruit development. WOW!
But if truth be told, the article had me at "andromonoecious." :0)
Link to article here: http://cuke.hort.ncsu.edu/cgc/cgc3334/cgc3334-2.pdf
Dear George,
ReplyDeleteYou just blew my mind with "andromonoecious sex expression." Lemon cucumbers are even queerer than I first thought, it turns out. This remains the most popular and commented-upon WV post ever, and one day, when I've retired from being Stretched Too Thin (i.e. juggling PhD completion + monster translation job + campus administrative job), I need to write a follow-up post. Thank you for this further reading!