Is it a fruit or a vegetable?

 

Vegetable generally refers to an edible part of a plant. The definition is traditional rather than scientific. It is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, as it is determined by individual cultural customs of cooking and food preparation.

In general, with some exceptions, any herbaceous plant or plant part which is regularly eaten as food by humans, would normally be considered to be a vegetable. Vegetables are very often eaten cooked. Some, such as potato, are never eaten raw, but many such as carrots, bell peppers and celery are quite commonly eaten either raw or cooked.

Mushrooms, though belonging to the biological kingdom Fungi, are also loosely considered as vegetables.

In general, vegetables are regarded by cooks as being most suitable for savory or salted dishes, rather than sweet dishes, although there are many exceptions, such as pumpkin pie, etc.

Nuts, seeds, grains, herbs, spices and culinary fruits (see below), are not normally considered to be vegetables, even though they are all parts of plants.

Some people would consider that salad greens such as lettuce are not vegetables, because they are almost never cooked, but not everyone would agree with this exception.

Is it a fruit or a vegetable?

Venn diagram representing the relationship between "vegetables" in the culinary sense, and "fruits" in the botanical sense.

The word "vegetable" is a culinary term, not a botanical term. The word "fruit" on the other hand can be a culinary term or a botanical term.

Botanically speaking, fruits are fleshy reproductive organs of plants, the ripened ovaries containing one or many seeds. Thus, many botanical fruits are not edible at all, and some are actually extremely poisonous. In a culinary sense however, the word "fruit" is only applied to those botanical fruits which are edible, and which are considered to be a sweet or dessert food such as strawberries, peaches, plums etc.

In contrast to this, a number of edible botanical fruits, including the tomato, the eggplant, and the bell pepper are not considered to be a sweet or dessert food, are not routinely used with sugar, but instead are almost always used as part of a savory dish, and are salted. This is the reason that they are labeled as "vegetables".

In other words it is quite legitimate for a plant part to be scientifically referred to as a "fruit", even though it is used in cooking or food preparation as a vegetable.

The question "The tomato: is it a fruit, or is it a vegetable?" found its way into the United States Supreme Court in 1893. The court ruled unanimously in Nix v. Hedden, 1893, that a tomato is correctly identified as, and thus taxed as, a vegetable, for the purposes of the 1883 Tariff Act on imported produce. However, the court did acknowledge that botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit.