Pomegranates are an amazing fruit. They have a tantalizingly
sweet, yet very sharp taste, a magnificent crimson red color and are full of
all sorts of vitamins and minerals. I have loved this odd package of color and
flavor since a young boy, and was rather excited to blog about it. The first
thing I had originally planned on doing was talking about how this fruit got its
nick name “Indian apple”; I have always called it this and became interested on
the history behind it. It turns out, I couldn’t find anything about the name
online or how it came about. I was so surprised! I thought everyone used the
term Indian apple so I just assumed that it would have been a popular topic
online. I was also under the impression that pomegranates originated here in
the USA, which I was also dead wrong about.
Contrary to my popular belief, pomegranate is widely believed
to have originated in Iran. Thanks to
the ancient trade routes, the pomegranate made its way across the Middle East, through
Europe and eventually Asia. The pomegranate wasn’t introduced to the fruit
until about 1769, when Spanish settles visited California and Latin America.
In the United States, the pomegranate is largely popular for
its acute flavor. In other parts of the world, the pomegranate tree is used
widely for decoration as well. In Japan and Korea, the plant is used frequently
in Bonsai for its unique bark
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| A freshly opened pomegranate |
Do you know the story behind the Indian apple name? Even
though my search came up fruitless (pun intended), I would still love to know
the origin of the name! Thanks for reading; I hope to see you tomorrow when I
will be covering the ingredient “quinoa”.
Till next time,
~Mr. McLovin
