How did certain types of berries like cucumbers and eggplants become classified as vegetables instead of fruits?

Question

How did certain types of berries like cucumbers and eggplants become classified as vegetables instead of fruits?

In: 3

Answer 1

There’s botanical fruits and then there’s culinary fruits.

A botanical fruit is any sort of fleshy food growth that a plant is using to disperse its seeds. Pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers… they’re all fruits in a biological sense.

But they’re not sweet, so you can’t use them in fruit dishes when cooking. They have to be prepared and seasoned differently to make them palatable, more akin to a vegetable.