I can make a scrumptious cherry pie with tart cherries. I like maraschino cherries. but anything cherry-flavored, gum, jello, jelly, candy - ick, it all tastes like cherry cough syrup. Ick.
Here’s a really good article on this subject:
Basically it posits that the artificial fruit flavors that we know are historical relics of an earlier age of chemistry, and that’s what people are used to now. And in the case of bananas, the artificial flavor predated the commercial introduction of bananas to the US!
As far as a grapey flavored grape goes, the local supermarket had a Midnight Blue (?) grape that has a nice distinctive grape flavor. The cashier was wondering how they taste, so I told her take one from my bag. She said “yum!”
I’m kind of like that with watermelon. I didn’t really like real watermelon as a kid, although now I will eat it but am just sort of meh about it. But I love artificial watermelon flavored candy, like Jolly Ranchers, which as far as I can tell taste absolutely nothing like real watermelon.
With coffee, I imagine the difference is that coffee ice cream is mostly milk and sugar with a little coffee for flavor, as opposed to just coffee. Sort of like a frozen Frappuccino.
Well, as you might have already guessed, I’m not exactly a cherry connoisseur. In fact, other than being dimly aware of Bings, I don’t think I ever was aware of any of the various cultivars that are out there. But if I had to guess, I would say it’s unlikely they were Rainiers. They are so light-colored that I would have assumed that they were not yet ripe and held out for something more resembling what I always thought of as a cherry.
I kind of get it, but nothing can beat Wild Cherry Pepsi Zero and Cherry Coke Zero.
I love cherry soda. I remember when these cans came out of Cherry Coke, I could not get enough of it
Historical trivia: Cherries were first cultivated on the southern shore of the Black Sea, in what is now Turkey. They were unknown in the West until Lucullus brought some home to Rome from one of his campaigns.
Yes, war does contribute to culture!
Wine trivia: I once assumed red wine was made from red grapes and white wine from green grapes, but, as I learned in bartending school, it’s not so. All grape juice is clear. Red wine is made by crushing red grapes and then letting the hulls steep in the juice.
I bet you’ve never tasted a Sparkle.
Standard supermarket strawberries are all indeed pretty much the same: they’re all tasteless, or nearly so. Many of them also have the texture of an underripe pear.
Really good strawberries don’t ship well.
Strawberries don’t ripen any further after picking.
That’s part of the reason good ones don’t ship well – when picked fully ripe, they’re soft and easily damaged; but, if picked unripe, unlike some other fruits berries don’t ripen further. (The rest of the reason has to do with breeding for firm berries that hold up to shipping, a characteristic which doesn’t seem to go along with flavor.)
Variety makes a whole lot of difference in flavor of strawberries. Of most things, really.
Cherry flavoured stuff, I find does not taste like cherries, but it tastes “red”. Similarly, grape flavouring tastes purple.