Is a cucumber a fruit or a vegetable?
It is technically a fruit. From a botanical perspective, a fruit is the mature ovary of a plant, such as an apple, melon, cucumber, or tomato. From the common, every day “grocery store perspective,” we tend to use the word fruit with respect to fruits eaten fresh as desserts – apples, peaches, cherries, etc. – and not to items cooked or used in salads. So, cucumbers tend to be lumped in with vegetables because of the way they are used (cooked and in salads), but botanists will call them fruits because they develop from the reproductive structures of plants. From the Cornell Department of Horticulture. Q: I’m looking for a recipe for a) my Great-Aunt Bertha’s Cucumber sandwich, b) this fabulous cucumber soup I had in Chicago, c) an old recipe for cucumber salad I cut out of a magazine years ago but seem to have misplaced, d) some other recipe that is not on your page. Could you please send it to me?
