This thread reminds me of a recent article in the Wall St. Journal in which oysters from varying parts of the country were described as each having their own subtle nuances and bouquet. My favorite was the Hama Hama from Washington state,
described as "Clean, crisp, herbaceous. “In the spring, Hama Hama tend to be sweeter; in the winter, brinier. In both seasons, the oysters have a light cucumber/melon finish.”
No doubt you’d wreck that cucumber/melon finish if you did something dastardly like rinse them to get the sand/grit out.
I remain skeptical that many of these nuances (in oysters, fruits/vegetables or what have you) are reproducibly detectable.
I could believe that oysters aren’t the same everywhere - they are filter feeders - their flavour is going to be influenced by the composition of the available food - and I guess that could easily vary from one region to another, as well as the mineral composition of the water, temperature conditions and other details of the actual environment (e.g. grown in an estuary vs a bay)
Whether those differences are consistent across a span of time is a little more debateable, as is the capacity of the human palate to objectively identify the differences.
I’m not a connoisseur of oysters though, (tried them - don’t hate them, but they don’t taste like food) so I can’t speak with any conviction on this matter. Blackberries on the other hand, I have some experience of - water diminishes their aroma - even ripe fruits gathered dry after a brief rain shower are inferior (they’re OK - I’ll still pick them for the freezer, but when I stick my face in the box on the way back home, the perfume is missing or greatly diminished).
Okay, makes sense - berries can only endure a gentle washing, whereas tomatoes can be handled with less care.
I agree that the experience of a just-picked tomato is sublime. There is a distinctive smell and taste that is never duplicated by any tomato that has been handled/washed/stored.
It is the leaves - I think Jamie Oliver has recommended adding a sprig of tomato leaves to cooked tomato sauces (pulling them out as soon as they have wilted), but I am not sure that’s a good idea - I think the leaves contain toxins as well as the distinctive aroma resins. The Solanaceae family isn’t sure whether it wants to feed us, or kill us.
In particular, varieties grown for supermarkets are selected for their durability through machines to wash, sort and pack them, often at the expense of flavor.
In the UK, raspberry beetle larvae (which look pretty maggoty) are very common in summer picked raspberries and blackberries. Less so autumn fruiting ones, due to lifecycles.
Dunno if something similar is common in other places, but they are a bit of a pain here. They’re not poisonous or anything, I’m sure I’ve eaten plenty when carelessly picking, and I’ve never noticed a flavour from them even. They certainly are unappetising though.
I’ve had the little bright-green guys come wriggling out from the hollow interior of a raspberry in a store-bought pint a few times while rinsing. I put them outside, where bugs belong.
Oh HELLSyes (links to several reports of food poisoning outbreaks linked to raspberries).
Unless you know everything about how they were grown and what may have been used on the plants, it’s really risky to not at least give them a light rinse.
Are they as lovely as a fresh-off-the-bush berry? Probably not. Are they still pretty darn yummy? Absolutely. It’s the same tradeoff you have to make with any food you didn’t grow yourself.
Regarding flavor variations in a vegetable or fruit which some attribute to washing/not washing, it’s likely that growing conditions (soil type, drainage, fertilizer availability and myriad environmental factors) play a far greater role in perceptions of taste.
For example, the field of metabolome analysis (using a tool as GC/mass spec) measures a large array of small molecules in organisms such as plants, and can detect striking differences depending on environment. It’s not unreasonable to think that a plant facing particular stressors would elaborate considerable different arrays of compounds, some of which have an impact on flavor.
I don’t know how much research may have been done on this, but I’ve certainly found marked variation in tomato flavor between growing seasons. Varieties that were especially tangy and flavorful one year might be relatively bland in a future season in my garden. Prolonged hot spells or irregular rains might have made the difference.
It depends on both the sensitivity of the person, and how hard they are trying. I can tell the difference between Penzey’s Vietnamese cinnamon, Ceylon cinnamon, and Chinese cassia - if I sniff them directly. But I have to be concentrating. I haven’t tested it, but I’d be very surprised if I could tell which one I used for a strawberry-rhubarb pie simply by the taste of the pie.
Similarly, after finishing an irreplaceable and delicious jar of honey from a small beekeeper in France (all three people in my family could easily taste how much more delicious it was than “regular” honey), we purchased 3-4 different types of mid-to-high end honey from the grocery, and ran a taste test. My husband and son couldn’t correctly guess which was which in a blind taste test - I could.
Not disputing any of what you’re saying - environmental conditions can have a big impact on flavour (for example, I think tomatoes taste better if the vine has been water-stressed at some point - but you get a smaller crop).
However, my comparisons of e.g. blackberries washed vs unwashed were made with the same specimens - smell them on the way home from picking vs smell them in the kitchen after washing. Same observation for tomatoes - eating straight off the plant vs eating other fruits off the same plant later after washing.
I wash all fresh produce with a special cleaner I get at Trader Joe’s. Raspberries have to be washed gently, obviously, so I make up a 2qt bowl of the cleaner and gently stir them around, while singing “Happy Birthday”(no, I will not pay royalties:D) twice, then gently lift them into another bowl of fresh water to get rid of the solution, leaves, berries that didn’t survive the process,dirt etc., rasps are amazingly dirty. Drained well, I repack them into their plastic container(which I also wash), lined with a paper towel, and they hold up amazingly well in the fridge. They always seem raspberry-licious to me. And I’ve never seen a bug in any of 'em.
Blackberries don’t require as gentle a touch when you wash them, since they retain their core, unlike raspberries. I’m usually able to hold blackberries in the fridge for about 2 weeks, which I think speaks well for washing them before storage. Raw blackberries taste OK,but cooking them briefly with some water, a bit of sugar and a scraping of nutmeg improves them immeasurably.
Apples get washed, even though I always peel them. Lemons for sure get the treatment, since I invariably use the zest as well as the juice. I can always feel the slightly sticky skin on tomatoes, after washing they feel quite smooth. The brown/green Mexican tomatoes, which sometimes take a week or two to start turning red, hold up very well after being washed.
Nope – we eat raspberries straight off the cane in the allotment (after checking for stinkbugs though, of course). Strawberries never make it back to the house, either – best consumed after lying in the warm spring sun all day. No problems eating around the slug-munched parts.
We do wash the produce that comes from the local fruit and veg shop, though, especially after watching an old boy dripping snot down his nose onto the broccoli box. Ditto when another older fellow rode his dirty bicycle straight into the shop and ‘parked’ it by letting it drop against a couple of shelves of produce.