I had a bunch of bananas recently that never really ripened properly. They got old and started to burn brown. They even got a little softer. But they never achieved the texture and sweetness of a truly ripened banana. They retained that sorta dry starchy characteristic of an under ripe fruit.
That got me to thinking about all the bananas that I’d ever eaten…and I eat one pretty much every day. This never happens. Given time, bananas always ripen and are tasty, right? My question is…are there other fruit that you can buy in the store that you can take home and not have to wonder, “Is this any good?”
Grapes seem to be pretty consistent, although not as much as bananas. Some are better than others, but I’ve never had any that were conspicuosly disappointing. Peaches can be counted on to be invariably awful, unless purchased in season from my co-op. Lemons and lime seem to be pretty uniform, too, although, obviously the standards are as strict.
It may have to do with how they reproduce. I believe bananas have separate male and female plants. You can get 3 or 4 types of bananas/plantains around here, though, so maybe there are more varieties than we generally know about.
The standard yellow banana most commonly eaten is the Cavendish variety, and I believe all the plants are clones, which might explain the consistency in taste. The bad news is that there is a fungus that is attacking the Cavendish banana plants, and will probably decimate the existing banana plantations. This happened at least once before. Prior to 1960, the common banana variety was the Gros Michel, but it was attacked by a different fungus.
There are several popular varities and species of banana commonly on sale; apart from plantains, which are for cooking, probably the most obviously different kind would be red bananas - the texture is different and they are more ‘fruity’.
My vote for the most uniform fruit would be watermelon - OK there are seedless ones now, but no mattr which variety you pick, they all taste very similar.
