Cucumis C. sativus

The common cucumber. They’re so ubiquitous nowadays that the cucumber has become boring to most diners. The flavor is far from common however. Sweet, bitter, subtle, and aromatic, cucumbers have a rich history and hold importance to cultures around the world.

The cultivation of cucumbers began some 3,000 years ago in India and spread westward into the Mediterranean, where the Greeks in particular liked the cucumber for it’s refreshing bitterness. Tzatziki, a sauce of cucumber and yogurt, is probably the most easily identified Greek-American food item in the today’s multicultural dining lexicon. Cucumbers were a popular crop in the middle ages because the creeping vines grew easily and produced a lot of fruit with little maintenance. Cucumbers found their way to America during the age of exploration and a few hundred years of cultural transformation placed them on top of our hamburgers as our sweet and tangy pickles.

Because they’re used in more savory applications, we often consider cucumbers a vegetable. However, cucumbers are actually a fruit, along with tomatoes, eggplant, and bell peppers, among other plants, because they’re produced from the ovary of a flowering plant. They belong to the gourd family, along with the sweet melons we’re familiar with: watermelon, musk melon, and honeydew. Next time you eat a melon, concentrate on the cucumber-like bitterness in the refreshing background flavor. Although hundreds of cucumber varieties exist, the most commonly encountered in America are the waxy cucumber (which contains a heavy center of seeds), the seedless or English cucumber, and small pickling cucumbers.

Keep reading Garrett’s Table in the coming days for a dish that proves that cucumbers can be both sweet and savory at the same time.

Share on Facebook