Avocado

The avocado is an extremely popular fruit grown primarily in Mexico and California. When ripe, it features a purple to black, dimpled skin. The flesh of the avocado is creamy in texture with an oily, nutty taste. It grows around a hard, inedible core.

The most common variety of avocado is the Hass avocado. It features a much larger edible portion than its wild relatives. The fleshy portion of the Hass avocado is most often used as a blending agent in recipes. It turns conflicting tastes into complementary tastes. Although it was initially extremely unpopular, the Hass avocado has become quite popular throughout America.

Background

Avocados are an ancient fruit. They existed long before humanity, beginning to thrive sixty-five million years ago during the Cenozoic era. Scientists theorize that avocados were eaten by large, prehistoric animals. These animals ate avocados whole, spreading their seeds across long distances. However, most of these species went extinct at the end of the Cenozoic era. Many scientists are unsure how avocados survived extinction. Some believe that rodents and birds took the place of large mammals and buried the seeds.

The first known people to enjoy avocados were the Aztecs of Mexico. The Aztecs revered the fruit. They selectively bred avocados, increasing the size of the edible portion of the fruit while decreasing the size of the seed. When Spanish conquistadors invaded Aztec territory, the Aztecs shared their knowledge of the avocado. The conquistadors quickly adopted the fruit in their diet and praised its use in many recipes.

Unfortunately, avocados were difficult for conquistadors to cultivate. Avocados thrived in a very specific environment, and the conquistadors had trouble replicating it in their homeland. Additionally, the Aztec name for avocados, ahuacate, was difficult to pronounce. For these reasons, avocados remained a niche delicacy for centuries.

The avocado began to grow in popularity at the beginning of the twentieth century. Americans began to realize how delicious the fruit was when used in Mexican recipes and recognized its value when added to traditional American dishes. Commercial demand for avocados began to outpace available supplies. Prices quickly rose, which drew the interest of American farmers. Farmers soon realized that California's warm days, cool nights, and moderate humidity provided the perfect environment for avocados to flourish. However, the farmers still faced the problem of the fruit's difficult-to-pronounce name. A number of farmers who wished to experiment with the crop met at a hotel in California. They decided to change the fruit's name from ahuacate to avocado, with the goal of reaching more American consumers.

The name change was successful, and American interest in avocados skyrocketed. In response, farmers began growing avocados throughout California. Avocados soon became an immensely profitable cash crop, further increasing American interest in the fruits. When the importation of avocados from Mexico was banned over concerns about invasive species being brought to American habitats along with the fruits, avocados became even more profitable for American farmers.

Overview

More than four hundred varieties of avocado exist in the wild. The most common, commercially available variety is the Hass avocado. The Hass avocado is named for Rudolf Hass, a California resident who purchased the first Hass avocado seeds from Mexico. When the seeds grew into trees, Hass realized that one of his avocado trees was distinctly different than the others. The skin of its fruit was thick and dimpled, and the fruit turned purple or black as it ripened. Hass avocados are extra oily and have a strong nutty taste. While other varieties of avocado are sometimes commercially available, they often have a much smaller edible portion than Hass avocados.

All avocados grow on trees. Like most fruits, avocados develop when the tree flowers. As the flowers die, the fruits emerge. A single tree can produce as many as five hundred avocados with each bloom. Avocado trees usually bloom twice a year. Occasionally, a tree blooms a third time in one year. These valuable blooms are called "off-blooms."

Avocados are very delicate fruits. They are often harvested by hand. Workers gently cut each stem and then place the fruit in a basket. If the fruit is impacted, it will bruise, which greatly reduces its chance of sale. When workers cannot reach an avocado, they use specially constructed shears to cut the stems. These shears extend high into the air and come with an attached bag or basket to quickly catch the fruit. Any fruit that falls to the ground will almost certainly be bruised.

After being picked, avocados are quickly packed into crates. The fruit ripens at an extremely rapid pace, so it must be shipped quickly. To slow this process, farmers sometimes store the fruit in chilled or refrigerated conditions. The cold slows the chemical reactions that cause the fruit to ripen and allows them to be shipped over greater distances. Some farmers even wash the avocados in a bath of cold water. This cleans the fruits of any residual pesticides while also keeping them cold to slow ripening.

A second renaissance for avocado recipes began in 2014. A tasty recipe for an avocado spread, commonly eaten with toast, became immensely popular on the Internet. This led to a large spike in the popularity of other avocado recipes. When used in recipes, avocado acts as a blending agent. It brings out weaker elements in a recipe and softens the bolder ones. The avocado's unique properties allow it to be utilized with a wide variety of ingredients. For this reason, the avocado has become a common component of salsa. It allows the peppers, sauce, and other ingredients to be tasted in equal measure. The same applies to one of the most popular avocado-based recipes, guacamole. Partly due to the popularity of guacamole, Americans consumed more than 139 million pounds of avocados during the 2016 Super Bowl.

Bibliography

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