Olivegarchy

[frithrah]

Stuffed green olives are graded by size. But where most people would be perfectly happy with categorizing them as small, medium, large, extra-large, and jumbo, Olives have this peculiar nomenclature. The largest of the group are Queen Placed, followed by Queen Tossed, Queen Thrown, and finally Manzanilla.

Is there some historical basis for this? Just who was this whacked out broad that liked to launch lesser olives airborn, pitching the tiniest of which all the way to Manzanilla?
From whence was this class structure derived?

[chukhung]

Aren’t Queen and Manzanilla different types of olives (as opposed to just different sizes)?

From this site, http://medinagarvey.com/faq.htm

To start with, the trees are different … you can tell by the leaves. Manzanilla olive trees have clear green leaves, Queen olive trees have silvery green leaves, and olive trees for olive oil have small, dark green leaves and bear smaller fruit

[Ellipsis in the original]

And I believe that “Placed” and “Thrown” refer to how the olives were packed, not their size. From the same site

“Place” packing is when the olives are arranged in layers in the jar, showing the pimiento stuffing. “Thrown” packing is as one would imagine, when the olives are put in the jars as they fall, then covered with brine and sealed.

[nineiron]

Don’t olives come in sizes like “colossal”?

I don’t know; I can’t stand the things myself. They’re one of the few foods I dislike.

[chukhung]

After some further Googling, I have stumbled across this document (warning: PDF) from The United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Fruit and Vegetable Division, Processed Products Branch: United States Standards for Grades of Green Olives which goes into excruciating detail about how green olives are categorized in the U.S.

There are, apparently, at least 11 different sizes for green olives. To wit:[ul][li]Sub-petite[/li][li]Petite or Midget[/li][li]Small or Select or Standard[/li][li]Medium[/li][li]Large[/li][li]Extra Large[/li][li]Mammoth[/li][li]Giant[/li][li]Jumbo[/li][li]Colossal[/li][li]Super Colossal[/ul] Note that stuffed green olives do not have separate Petite and Sub-petite sizes.[/li]
The interested reader may refer to the above document for further details on such topics as the “Types of Green Olives Pack”, “Styles of Green Olives”, “Grades of Green Olives” and other arcana of the green olive trade.