Fruit Category

This sweet, smooth-skinned variety shows up in the middle of winter. It's not as flavorful as other avocados.

Bacuri fruit have thick yellow skins and are about the size of large apple. The bacuri fruit is both sweet and a little sour and is made into condiments and drinks.

This is a fairly sweet, all-purpose apple, but it's hard to find.

Most of the bananas you and I have eaten in our lifetimes are the yellow Cavendish bananas. The burro banana = chunkey = chunky is shorter than the Cavendish, and has an interesting lemony flavor. The manzano banana is smaller yet and a bit drier, but it fits nicely into lunch boxes. The red banana has a purple peel and is best used for baking. The plantain is larger than other banana varieties, and is usually fried, baked, or mashed before eating. Yellow bananas with a few dark spots are ripe and ready to eat, while green ones will ripen at room temperature in just a few days. Refrigerating ripe bananas will keep them from getting softy and mushy, though the peels will darken.

These sweet, mild peppers with a fruity flavor are easily confused with hotter yellow wax peppers. Sample before using.

This variety is so large that grocers usually cut into smaller chunks before putting it out. It's tasty, but its biggest virtue is the beautiful golden color of its flesh.

These yellow barhi dates can be peeled and eaten fresh or dried.

These are very juicy and great for eating out of hand. They turn yellow when ripe.

Red and yellow peppers are riper, more flavorful, and pricier than the more common green ones. You can occasionally find bell peppers in other colors as well, like brown, white, pink, orange, and purple. Bell peppers are the perfect size for hollowing out and stuffing, or you can slice them into strips for snacking or dipping.

This is a small acidic orange, used for its peel. The flesh is too bitter and sour to be eaten raw. Don't confuse it with the bergamot herb.

This small, tart berry is the European counterpart to the American blueberry. Bilberries are usually made into preserves.

This bitter vegetable is believed to have medicinal properties and is widely used throughout Asia.

These are too tart to eat out of hand, but they're often used to make syrups, preserves, and the liqueur cassis. Frozen are a good substitute for fresh.

Black currant jelly is sweeter than more common red currant jelly.

These are olives that have been allowed to ripen on the tree. American recipes that call for black olives are probably referring to the Mission olive. Other varieties of black olives are the Aleppo, Alphonso, Amphissa, black Cerignola, Gaeta, black Greek, Kalamata, Ligurian, Lugano, Moroccan dry-cured, Niçoise, Nyons, Ponentine, and Royal.

This fruit has an olive-green rind and tastes like a papaya that's been sprinkled with cocoa.

These would be excellent berries were it not for their rather large seeds. They're still great for eating out of hand, but cooks often strain out the seeds when making pies and preserves. Select berries that are free of mold, and as black as possible. They arrive in markets in the summer.

These red-fleshed oranges are more popular in Europe than in the United States. Look for them in the winter and spring.

Blueberries are small and sturdy, so they're perfect for tossing into cakes, muffins, cereal bowls, and fruit salads. Like other berries, they also make good preserves and tarts. Select firm, dark berries that have a whitish bloom on them. Keep them refrigerated and wash them just before you eat them. You can find fresh blueberries in the summer, but frozen blueberries are available year-round and work well in many recipes. Frozen berries get a little mushy after they're defrosted, but they'll work well in many recipes. Canned blueberries also work in pies and baked goods, but drain off the liquid and rinse them first.

This firm and crunchy pear is the best choice for cooking, because it holds its shape nicely. Bosc pears can also be eaten out of hand.

A boysenberry is a cross between a blackberry, a raspberry, and a loganberry. It's more fragile than a blackberry, but it doesn't have the blackberry's conspicuous seeds. Select boysenberries that are dark in color and free of mold.

This firm and juicy apple is good for eating out of hand or for baking.

This is the plant that the H.M.S. Bounty was carrying in the South Pacific when its crew mutinied. Captain Bligh's goal had been to transport the seedlings from Tahiti to the Caribbean, so that slaves there would have a ready source of starch and calories. Breadfruit is highly perishable, so fresh ones are hard to find outside the tropics. The canned version is a good substitute. A seeded version is called a breadnut.

This fragrant fruit has hardly any flesh, but the peel can be candied

This Italian heirloom pepper is shaped like a bull's horn, and many cooks think it's a lot more flavorful than an ordinary bell pepper.

With sweet and creamy orange flesh, the buttercup is one of the more highly regarded winter squashes. The biggest shortcoming is that it tends to be a bit dry. Choose specimens that are heavy for their size.

This variety is very popular because it's so easy to use. It's small enough to serve a normal family without leftovers, and the rind is thin enough to peel off with a vegetable peeler. As an added bonus, the flavor is sweet, moist, and pleasantly nutty.

These small sweet peppers come in different colors and looks like squished bell peppers. They're popular in the Caribbean, where they're often stuffed and roasted.

These are popular in Hispanic countries and throughout the Caribbean. They're large, so markets often cut them up before selling them.

These are dried Anaheim chiles, and very mild.

This small pear is the same size as a Seckel pear, but it's not as juicy and sweet.

This firm, mildly tart apple is quite versatile. Use Cameos in pies, applesauce, salads, or just eat them out of hand.

These tend to vary in quality, so unless you're good at selecting melons, stick with more idiot-proof varieties like the honeydew or cantaloupe. Canaries should, at a minimum, have bright yellow rinds. They're in season in the fall.

These are used to make decorative flower stems on cakes.