This feels like a case where botanical science should just have picked a different name. If you invalidate everything people think of as a berry and then tell them a dozen things that are clearly not berries are, in fact, berries, you’re just making the word berry meaningless.
Berry means a tiny, usually sweet, fruit-like growth from a plant. The kind that is usually picked in bunches. The kind that you use to make smoothies. That’s a berry.
Botany did us all a disservice by choosing the word “berry” to mean “a specific thing which invalidates everything you think is a berry.” Just call that plant structure something in Latin, ffs.
Well, cooking terms and botany terms are not the same. Any non reproductive part of a plant is vegetable. But in cooking we have a completely different idea of what vegetables are.
This really doesn’t matter because most people are not botanists and those who are probably know the terms. The only people that care are quirky internet people with debates about weather or not potato salad should be considered a cake or something.
“Weather” is a nice ultimate touch
They did. It’s Baca. Which means berry. Or maybe cow. Naming stuff is hard
Naming would be easier if we collectively review the names every few years and retire the BS.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Knowledge is knowing the common definition of fruit doesn’t include tomato.
That’s because the scientific definition of berries has little in common with the colloquial one. That doesn’t make either wrong, they are just used in different contexts
Sometimes you feel like a peanut is not a nut!
Sometimes you don’t!
I’ve willfully disregarded botanical terminology every since I learned it.
Bad practice, picking generic terms to define differently.
Scary-berry
Pumpkin pie also rarely is made with pumpkin, it’s usually squash
Pumpkin pie is always made with squash. Occasionally, those squash are pumpkins
Pumpkin is a squash
Having made pumpkin pies for decades, this is true. Pumpkin is a squash.
Pumpkin pie is gross. Apple is the superior turkey-day pie.
What?
Botanically speaking they are correct.
How is a pumpkin a berry?
With great effort, I imagine. A pumpkin is also a squash.
Pumpkins are cool
What about what?
The post probably.
What post?
TIL, wow. I mean, to be fair, “berry” is in the damn name, so I never questioned it.
These are lies! This is pumpkin propaganda, spread by the spirit of Halloween.