Strange Fruit: 8 Vegetables and Fruits That Used to Look a Lot Different
There are several things that come to mind when viewing a depiction of a watermelon done by Giovanni Stanchi, a 17th century Italian painter: ‘weird’, ‘surreal,’ and maybe even ‘fascinating. Among a cornucopia of staid fruits (peaches, pears, and squashes) it stands out. The flesh is pale and it appears desiccated – subject to a process called starring, which occurs due to a lack of pollination. Thanks to selective breeding, the watermelon has morphed into its current, beloved incarnation: red, juicy flesh surrounded by a thin rind.
Paintings like these are a lens into the history of old cultivars and their ascent into their modern forms. Here are several fruits and vegetables, some of them nearly unrecognizable from their current iterations, that have evolved alongside mankind.
1. Carrots
Early carrots were thin, forked, and off-white, which doesn’t make for a very appetizing taste. The Dutch credit the carrot’s bright orange color to William of Orange – the orange carrot was grown by peasant farmers in honor of the Dutch revolutionary. It makes for a nice folk tale, though most experts attribute the orange carrot’s origin to the Persian Plateau, where it split off into two main classes: the Asiatic group and the Western group. From there on, it mutated into the predominant orange hue seen in groceries around the world.
2. Tomatoes
Early tomatoes were small, similar to grape tomatoes, bearing fruit that may have been chartreuse in color. In the past, the common tomato was almost as feared as the deadly nightshade, so much that it became nicknamed as the ‘poison apple.’ The reality was that the aristocrats that dined on its fruit possibly imbibed toxic quantities of lead, which leached from pewter plates due to the high acidity of the tomatoes.
Nowadays, its villainy has diminished drastically and it stars in many a tasty dish in Italian cuisine (in Italy, it’s known as the golden apple). From the convoluted heirlooms of the 19th century to the robust hybrids of today, the tomato has redeemed itself to become one of the most important garden crops.
3. Cucumbers
With their spiky skin and sprawling vines, wild cucumbers resemble something that might have infested the Beast’s fortress in Sleeping Beauty. Early cucumbers were hairy, nasty, and bitter – like the Beast himself. As further deterrence against predators, they were high in cucurbitacins, bitter compounds that can cause an upset stomach, in addition to belching. Unless you’re trying to burp the alphabet, you probably wouldn’t want to sample an old-timey cucumber. To the Ancient Greeks, they were undesirable foodstuffs, although it was apparently held in high esteem by Tiberius, a Roman emperor. In the modern era, all of the wild cucumber’s undesirable traits have been removed, and there’s even a miniature variety that you can grow in your own home for a quick snack.
4. Eggplants
Perhaps the most drastic color transformation can be seen in the eggplant. What was once pale and shaped like a snake’s egg (and could probably fit into an egg carton) has now elongated and acquired a villainous purple tint. Early versions of the plant, which the English would have likely encountered in India during British colonial rule, were named accordingly. After years of breeding, it’s no longer particularly eggy, and has the reformed name aubergine to show for it. While those who have an aversion to eggplant will probably not care about its glossier and larger appearance, it’s quite commonplace in Middle Eastern and Asian cuisine. The small white eggplant is still around, though mainly used for ornamental purposes.
5. Beets
Beets are technically a taproot, and in its earliest forms, it was tough and thin, akin to a parsnip. It was grown for its greens and then in Europe as a root vegetable of last resort in times of famine. It wasn’t until the 19th century that beetroot was recognized for its high sucrose content, and subsequently, the first sugar beet factory was built in what is now Poland. It turned out to be a wise investment, as beet sugar production required 4 times less water than sugarcane production, providing a salient alternative. Nowadays, beets aren’t exactly popular, but they do make great natural dyes for coloring foods.
6. Banana
The fact that the banana could become extinct sounds absurd, but not when you consider its history. The most popular variety, Cavendish bananas, owe their existence to William Cavendish, who cultivated it to be seedless, with sweeter flesh. In contrast, wild bananas are stockier, packed with seeds as pitiless as stones. Cavendish bananas are grown through monoculture, reproduced through clones at cost-effective levels that’s made it popular with commercial farming. Yet, it’s also made it more susceptible to virulent strains of disease, a fate that befell the Gros Michel (cheekily dubbed Big Mike) when a fungus decimated its crops. In case the banana apocalypse does occur, there’s always specialty varieties you can try.
7. Corn
It seems unbelievable that the juicy kernels of corn were once derived from teosinte, a rudimentary corn cob that is mostly grain grass – a fact corroborated by scientist George Beadle. In the 15th century, corn was brought back to the Spanish Empire by Spanish settlers, kickstarting its widespread cultivation. Early strains tended to be brown or pale colored. Over the past millennia, corn has evolved over from a few shriveled kernels into the sweet, uniform ears of maize that we know and love today.
8. Peach
If a rock singer were to time travel to 4000 B.C., he would not have waxed lyrical on what would be bred into the modern peach. Peaches in ancient times were small, cherry-sized, and slightly salty in taste, like a lentil. First cultivated in China thousands of years ago, they were brought out of their provincial villages via the Silk Road, eventually arriving in Persia and then the New World. Since then, their size has ballooned 64 times larger into the signature shape that is so heartily embraced worldwide.
