Pine nuts are usually roasted briefly in a pan and added as a seasoning ingredient to rice dishes, pesto and stewed leafy vegetables. They are also used to make sweets.
The paper-thin skin hides a very firm, crunchy, yellowish-white flesh, which tastes very good when ripe and has an aroma reminiscent of mango, lychee or (remotely) durian.
Zwetschgen are eaten fresh, processed into zwetschgendatschi tart, schmootsch and as dried fruits.
I have only tried the approximately walnut-sized kernels, of which there are usually 3 to 4 in a fruit. They contain a lot of water and have a subtle, coconut-like, sweet taste.
The red stone fruits can be processed well to juice, jam and syrup.
In addition to pepper mixtures, pink pepper berries are sometimes found in chocolate, which gives them a slight pungency and a peppery aroma.
Cornelian cherries taste sweet, but also quite astringent when picked and eaten fresh from trees or hedges.
The fresh, yellow fruits still taste astringent. Only in the brown, overripe fruits are the tannins degraded and the honey-sweet, caramel-like taste dominates.
Even if the fruits are not productive, they can be eaten fresh from the tree or processed into jam, compote and liqueur. The beautiful flowers can decorate dried tea mixtures.
During the ripening process, the initially yellow fruit is covered more and more with reddish-brown spots until the whole skin is brown.
The pitaya is best eaten fresh and raw. I like to spoon out the white, sweet fruit pulp from the halved fruit.
To open this fruit, I needed 2 large knives. A saw would have been better, but I didn’t have it at hand. When I spooned out the fruit, my spoon also broke.
In its consistency and fat content, the safou can best be compared to the avocado, but there is a lemon or lime-like aroma with a fine acidity.
Of all the yellow cherry varieties, this one is probably the best known and most common throughout Germany.
The intense pink color of this fruit, especially of the fruit flesh, is a challenge for the eye and for the camera sensor.
The carambola or star fruit is often used for decoration at buffets or in cocktails.
The fibrous tissue surrounding the seeds can be eaten raw, roasted or cooked at full maturity. It’s said it tastes like coconut.
If the myrobalan plum is not eaten raw, it can be processed into compote and jam.
The jelly palm has delicious orange fruits with a seed that looks and tastes like a mini coconut.
The variety morello cherry (subsp. acida) is well-known and often traded in glass jars, as compotes and jam, and it is an essential ingredient in the Black Forest gateau.
Blackthorn fruits are made into jam, jelly and compote.
The round fruits of the Turkmen pear look more like small apples, but the flesh contains the stone cells typical for pears
The hairy fruits, which grow on very short stems almost directly on the branch, are juicy and soft, slightly sweet and tart.
Although the noni not only smells bad but also tastes bitter, the ripe and unripe fruits and seeds are eaten.
Pineapple tomatoes are one of the largest and heaviest tomato varieties. Individual fruits can weigh over 1 kg.
The long, immature capsule fruits of the horseradish tree are called “drumsticks” where they are used as fruit vegetables.
When the fruit ripenes, it turns red, unfortunately it becomes also very mushy. The tindola, as the fruit of the ivy gourd plant is called, is eaten as a fruit-vegetable. Ripe fruits can be candied. In tropical Asia the young shoots are also eaten.
North American natives made tea from the leaves and also ate them as a salad. The inner bark was smoked like tobacco.
Unlike the grey-violet, roundish passion fruit (P. edulis f. edulis), this fruit of sweet granadilla is rarely used for the production of juices, but mainly as freshly eaten dessert fruit.
Like their red relatives, white currants are popular garden plants, but their fruits are sweeter.
The fruits of the scarlet fuchsia are edible, taste sweet and a little pungent.
The soursop is very similar to the cherimoya which is related to it, but it is even more sensitive to pressure and therefore rarely found on the market.
The green walnut is the unripe walnut fruit (J. regia) harvested before St John’s Day on 24 June which is processed into a delicacy.
Rosehips can be used to make fruit tea and Hagebuttenmark. Dried and ground, they even replace flour and can be mixed with it.
From rose hips a fruit tea can be prepared as well as jam (“hagebuttenmark, buttenmost”) . Dried and ground, they even can be used as a flour substitute and can be mixed with flour.
Redcurrants are processed to red fruit soups and summer pudding, juice and ice cream. And many more…
As with blood oranges and the red lemon, there are also red pigmented variants of mandarins and clementines.
The fruit is very thick-skinned and also resembles the size of a citron.
The fruit ripens throughout the summer and into the autumn. It has a firm flesh and is mainly processed into tomato paste and canned food.
Miracle berry has a unique effect on our sense of taste: it superimposes taste impressions in a way that everything is perceived as being sweet.
The kernel (nucellus) contains a lot of starch (and vitamins), so that a flour can be obtained from them after roasting, with which flat bread is baked or crackers called “emping” are fried.
The jelly-like fruit content, which surrounds the disc-shaped seeds, tastes sweet and is a small snack for anytime.
Specially from the immature fruit (as well from the leaves) of the bitter orange the aromatic oil “Petitgrain” is won.
The huge citrons have little fruit pulp and a thick peel (the white albedo), which is usually candied and added to bakery for seasoning.
Juice and fruit pulp can savoured fresh or processed to jelly and lemonade, if the bitterness is not unpleasant.
The King of the Pippins is low in acidity and tastes sweet, and for a long time this cultivar was considered one of the best apples in the world.
The fruits of the natal plum, which are red when ripe, have a creamy, soft consistency and taste sweet.
The fruits are small, not particularly juicy and decompose easily, which is why they have not become established as a fruit plant.
The highest importance has the aromatic oil, of course, in the perfume production, but also tea (Earl Gray and Lady Gray), confectionery and Lokum are flavored with bergamot oil.
The multiform Buddha’s hand is a special kind of citron.
Java apples are usually eaten raw as dessert fruit, but sometimes they also find their way into spicy dishes.
Under the light green skin of these large, still immature fruits is a white, firm fruit flesh, whose sticky latex quickly turns yellow.
Just like fruits, such arilli can be very fleshy and taste sweet.
The flesh of this persimmon reminded me of a dried date: it was brown and soft, tasted sweet, perhaps caramel-like, but unfortunately also “not quite fresh”.
Cattley guava has spherical, red berries that can be eaten fresh or processed into juice, jam and sorbet.
Rosehips can be used to make fruit tea and Hagebuttenmark.
Pomegranate juice is obtained from these fruits, which is then processed into pomegranate wine and grenadine.
It is cut into small pieces for seasoning, especially for salsas.
The edible fruits of Sinofranchetia are very similar to grapes, but less sweet and with a little leathery skin.
This crab apple can be used in a similar way to most mealy and low acid apples, but above all it can be eaten fresh from the tree.
The ‘Anhalter’ apple variety is classified as a cider apple. It has a high tannin content and is therefore particularly suitable for the production of cider and apple juice.
The Magenta Lilly Pilly is usually eaten raw, but can also be processed to a jam
Boiled, fried or filled and baked, the immature fruits are very appreciated because of their bitterness.
The gooseberry grows in many gardens and can be picked fresh from the bush or eaten as light green jelly or compote.
The variety comes from Japan and is named after a Japanese tribe (隼 人, “Falcon-People”), who lived on the Kyūshū island during the Nara period.
If the sponge gourd, which is also called vietnamese luffa, is still immature, its net-like tissue is not yet lignified and therefore soft and edible.
The berry tastes sweet, hardly sour and has no characteristic aroma.
This huge citrons have little pulp and a thick peel (the white albedo), which is usually candied and added as “succade” to pastry.
The fruits of the childing orange are “pregnant” with another fruit: in the interior grows a smaller fruit, along with a peel.
The “conspicuous” blackberry can be consumed directly from the bush as a soft fruit or processed into jam, jelly, liqueur, compote, sorbet and juice.
The name “Amanatsu” means “Sweet Summer”. The sun-yellow fruit is about the size of an orange. In Japan iIt is eaten fresh or processed into jam, juice, ice cream, liqueur and wine.
As soon as the small fruits of pheasant berry are ripe and therefore dark brown and soft, they taste intensely like slightly burnt (bitter) caramel.
In addition to the small, dark black grams, the immature, green pods are also edible as fruit vegetables.
This red-fleshy variety with the reddish peel is very delicious!
It is still a stubbornly held legend that the fruits of the rowanberry or mountain ash are poisonous. The small fruits are ideal for jam, mash, liqueur…
The white, sweet-tasting pulp inside the pink five-leaf akebia fruits is best eaten while the fruit has not yet opened by itself.
This strange bitter orange variety stands out for its furrowed skin, but is consumable like most other bitter orange varieties.
Almost all parts of the beautiful and fast-climbing stuffing cucumber are edible
The fruits grow in compact bundles and have a leathery, pale brown skin. The flesh is mainly eaten raw, but can also be processed into compote and canned foods.
The calamondin has a thin, sweet peel and sour pulp.
The black chokeberry contains many vitamins and other important substances in such large quantities that it has also medical significance.
The variety ‘Rotonda bianca sfumata di rosa’ is found in the trade quite rare, typical in our (European) view are the black varieties.
The cross section shows that ripe fruits of this variety no longer contain fruit juice.
Kumquats are eaten as a whole. They are sweet and tangy and very aromatic.
Quinces are rarely eaten raw. They are mainly consumed as jelly, stewed fruit, mush, chutney, schnapps and “dulce de membrillo”.
The plant is completely protected by sharp prickles, but this should not stop anyone from tasting the sweet berries that look like 2 cm large tomatoes.
The deep red colour of the Red Velvet Okras gets lost during cooking, the fruits turn as green as ordinary okra pods when heated.
The strawberries-like red fruits are edible, but taste dull and watery.
The extraordinary taste reminds of the resin from conifers compensates for the low yield.
For lemonade, jam, sorbet, in dressings and as a spicy, souring ingredient in spicy as sweet dishes.
The abundant juice of unripe fruit is used for the production of lemonades or fruit juices.
The fruits of the Florentine citron are hanging on the branches like an upside down pear.
Peel and juice can be used like lemon, the firm flesh resembles the grapefruit, but somewhat more acid.
The black skin is tough and tastes astringent, but the white, firm flesh inside is sweet and reminds of a grape or gooseberry in taste.
This berry of Harrisia pomanensis is not only visually reminiscent of pitayas, but also in taste and consistency.
Kaiser Alexander cucumbers at maturity have a dark brown skin with netting. At this stage, the fruit should be peeled before eating.
The Green Nightshade or Poro Poro is called ” man-eater tomato” in German.
Under the slightly leathery skin is a soft, mealy pulp with a flavour reminiscent of mango and pineapple.
The fruits are sweet and have a very aromatic taste. They are best eaten raw.
Contrary to the green colour, the Green Zebra tastes, like many other types of tomatoes, pleasantly sweet.
The beads refine or decorate sparkling wine, desserts, sushi or wherever a sour, fresh citrus flavour is welcome.
The entire plant of the ‘Elberta Girl’ tomato cultivar is covered with a fine, silvery fluff. The leaves are somewhat curly, the fruits are flamed. They are not very sweet, the flesh is of a rather mealy-soft consistency.
Fruits and leaves of “Monk’s pepper” work as spices. Especially the hot tasting fruits can be used as a pepper substitute.
The fruits can be cooked to make jam and juice. Raw, on the other hand, they taste very astringent.
The unique taste compensates for the painstaking production of jelly and compote.
The soft, juicy pulp tastes aromatic of fir, it is tart and resinous, yet very sweet.
The finely chopped leaves of borage even taste good in fruit salad or can be made into a kind of spinach.
Ripe fruits of Beale’s barberry are edible raw or cooked and a jam can be prepared. Dried berries give muesli a fruity note.
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Despite its higher juice content, Chinese citron can be used in the kitchen like other varieties of citron, such as succade or jam.
Many do not know that the fruits of prickly heath, which are usually white, can also be eaten.
The colourful fruits of Amur peppervine taste predominantly sweet. They have no intense taste and no acidity.
The Pear lemon is a Lumia cultivar and therefore a hybrid of Pomelo, Lemon and Citron.
Beef tomatoes are mainly used for cooking, they can be filled and baked or used in stews and sauces. Tomatoes are even suitable for jams – alone or mixed with other fruits.
They taste is almost the same as blackberries, but a bit more sour than these. The fruits can be picked straight from the shrub, or can be processed to jam and dewberry liqueurs.
The rather large fruits are steamed, roasted, stewed and baked, they can be filled.
Kumquats are eaten as a whole. They are sweet and tangy and very aromatic.
The black, round berries with white little hairs are best eaten fresh as soft fruit, but they are of course also suitable for making jam, jelly, juice and liqueur.
The fruits are juicy, which suggests a use for lemonade, marmelade and jelly.
Common buckwheat: Fagopyrum esculentum More than just ``Poor man's food`` An important identifying characteristics of the common buckwheat that differentiats from the other buckwheat species is the red stem. Because gluten is absent, buckwheat can not be used alone for
Billberry cactus has an impressive growth height of up to 4 meters, and yet it produces only very small, sweet tasting fruits.
Indigo rose tomato belongs to the rather small-fruited varieties and can be eaten directly from the shrub.
In contrast to other types of lime, kaffir limes contain little juice, which is why the use of the essential oils in the dish is the focus.
A typical attribute of the bright golden yellow tomato variety ‘Indian Moon’ is the fine blush of the very ripe fruits up to red “cheeks”.
The approximately 3-4 cm long, round-oval berries of the mouse melon resemble tiny water melons with their light and dark green mesh pattern, but they taste intensive like cucumbers.
In their East Asian origin, the fruits are chopped up and drunk as fruit tea, or they are made into canned goods.
The cultivar ‘Santa Barbara’ is orange in colour and has a perfume-like aroma and a slightly soapy taste.
The purple calabash tastes sweet and very aromatic, as one would otherwise expect from the much smaller cocktail tomatoes.
The stems are hardly sweet and are therefore usually given sugar.
The mature, fleshy single fruits of the infructescence is sweet and can be eaten directly or processed into jam.
In their original habitat, the immature fruits are eaten pickled or steamed.
The very firm, pleasant-smelling and astringent tasting fruits can be cooked and then juiced. For example, a jelly can be prepared from the juice.
The Eastern black walnut is used in the USA as in Europe the common walnut.
Winter’s Blackberry: Rubus winteri Not a winter crop Winter's blackberry, often called "winter blackberry", probably has nothing to do with the cold season. The "i" at the end of a botanical name usually refers to a surname and I suspect
In times of need, the seeds were used to produce a flour substitute.
The Baby Boo pumpkin is hardly bigger than an apple. The firm skin is white, the firm flesh rather cream-coloured to pale orange.
The purple or reddish, brittle cocoa beans are first fermented with the help of the sweet pulp for about 10 days, which reduces the bitter substances and slowly develops the typical cocoa aroma.
The local people like the fruits directly from the shrub, but they can also be processed to confectionery and fruit schnapps.
The protein (gluten) it contains is not said to have good adhesive properties, but black emmer wheat is nevertheless suitable for baking bread and pastries.
The horned cucumber or african horned melon is indeed related to cucumbers and melons. The green jelly inside tastes like a mixture of both, it is a bit sweet and has little acidity.
The smaller, thin-peeled fruits of Meyer lemon taste very intense and are not as sour as many other varieties. At the same time, they are very juicy.
Blauwschokker peas are mainly used as dry peas, less often fresh, although they taste sweet as long as they are harvested young and tender and are eaten immediately.
The grains are edible raw and cooked: crushed into porridge or ground into flour from which bread can finally be baked.
Despite its numerous uses, which are also used for medical purposes, Job’s tears are not very popular compared to other cereals. The cultivation is even declining.
The Ligiri, native to East Asia, carries clusters of small berries that taste bitter and tangy. They can be eaten raw or cooked.
Like most wild forms, also those of rye are not particularly productive and are rarely or no longer cultivated today in contrast to the cultivated forms.
The ripe seeds of the okra or okro can be roasted and nibbled or used as a coffee substitute.
Bog bilberries can be freshly taken from the shrub or processed into jam, compote, liqueur and wine.
This is FLORA OBSCURA "I think that edible plants - whether wild or cultivated - are the most valuable treasure of humanity. And that's how I want to present them: like precious jewels on black velvet." How are the images
If the seeds are not used for jewelery, they can be eaten like nuts. They are supposed to taste like pistachios.
×Secalotricum is a fertile hybrid of male wheat (Triticum) and female rye (Secale). This grain is also described in its baking properties as a mixture of both.
Wild oat is edible and can be valuable in times of need as a famine food.
The flower buds or flower bottoms of the burdock are edible like the artichoke. The young leaves are edible as wild vegetables.
Oaxacan Green dent corn is an old, green maize variety with very large cobs that was cultivated by the Zapotec Indians of Mexico in the province of Oaxaca.
Date plums can be eaten raw after frost destroyed their adstringency, but they are most eaten dried.
The small kiwi berries are in their anatomy miniature editions of the common kiwifruit (A. deliciosa) and also have the typical aroma of the large fruits.
The unripe legume of the Leadtree are particularly appreciated in Southeast Asian cuisine, although the plant originally comes from Central America.
This cultivation of hemp is useless as a drug crop, but as a food plant the more valuable.
The perettone citron is certainly one of the ornamental varieties among the citrus plants, but the fruits should be candied or made into jam.
Parsley is used as a fresh, aromatic kitchen herb, added to savory cold dishes or stews and sauces just before the end of cooking.
This dark popcorn bears comparatively many small cobs with small, round grains. These are almost black, with a blue-green shimmer.
The approximately 1 cm small fruits of the Hong Kong kumquat are the smallest citrus fruits in the world. In principle, they are edible, but they have little to offer because there is almost no flesh.
The small black seeds in the capules can be used as spices, they taste like a mixture of nutmeg and woodruff.
The list of preparation options for eating chestnuts is long…
Chervil tastes like aniseed or tarragon. It is used to season soups, salads, sauces and herb butter and is one of the seven herbs in Frankfurt’s green sauce.
Although the seeds of the hairy love grass produced in panicles are only about 0,5-0.8 mm in size, they are used as cereals.
From the ripe seeds of the horseradish tree, which is also called ben oil tree, the sweet-tasting ben oil is obtained, which does not turn rancid.
The fruits will probably only turn beautiful red when exposed to sufficient cold, otherwise they can remain yellow and look like ordinary lemons.
The numerous, tiny seeds are collected wildly in times of food scarcity, slightly roasted and ground into a flour from which a thin meal soup or porridge can be prepared.
Pearl millet is processed into millet gruel or flour, which is usually eaten as flatbread. Beer can be brewed from this crop.
A mash can be prepared from green rice and it is used as a coating for frying. With sugar, green rice can be cooked to brittle.
The fruits of the horned bitter orange bear one or more conspicuous bulges that can look like horns.
The dried grains can be popped or ground into flour, but flour and popcorn are then no longer so colourful.
The seeds of the Black-caraway are mostly roasted. They are slightly bitter and spicy, with an unobtrusive aroma of cumin and roasted sesame seeds.
The berries are compact, the fruits are green when ripe and have a high sugar content.
The red tissue, which encloses the poisonous seeds, tastes very sweet.
Beech can be used in many ways: the fruits called ” beechnuts ” as nuts or oil fruit and coffee substitute, leaves as salad, wood as smoke aroma.
In contrast to many other cereals, oats do not need to be peeled, only dehulled. Oats are always a wholemeal product and therefore rich in vitamins, minerals and fibres.
The black-brown seeds can be used as pseudocereals similar to quinoa, for example boiled as a porridge and grounded to a flour as addition to baking flour.
The value of the furrowed lemon does not lie in their yield, they are more regarded as ornamental fruits. Nevertheless, this variety is edible like common lemons: as lemonade, jam and much more.
Sorghum is a staple food in parts of Africa (especially West and East Africa) and India.
Despite its bright red berries, Schonburger belongs to the white wines, its quality is compared with Traminer.
The berries of Cabernet Mitos not only have a deep blue, frosted skin, but their pulp is also rich in red pigments, which is not the case with most other grapes.
Pinot Gris is a variety of the common grape vine, which belongs to the white wines although the grape skin has a reddish to grey-violet colour.
Riesling wines are of high quality and easily assume the character of their growing region.
All parts of meadow clover are edible, and a flour made from the ground leaves tastes of vanilla.
Scheurebe produces excellent dessert wines. But an early harvest leads to extremely unpleasant aromas, which are supposed to remind one of sweat or cat urine.
All parts of the tree smell of garlic and are used locally as a spice. Leaves are cooked as vegetables.
A striking characteristic of T. sinskajae is also the more compact and “round” shape of the awns.
Dried seeds are ground into a brown paste, mixed with cassava flour to form “Pasta Guarana” and sweetened as a stimulating drink, similar to coffee or cacao.