No, it’s more like the core that surrounds the seed. You know where you have that apple-y looking stuff that is really hard. It’s called the endocarp. [See here, as there are a couple layers.) That would be analogous to the shell of a stone fruit.
Here’s a picture of a walnut, with the endocarp labeled. It’s the shell.
walnut on tree, and split open
Is rhubarb a vegetable? How about quince? Gooseberries? Elderberries?
Vegetarians have been known to include fruit in their diets. My general feeling is that the distinction is not meaningful. “Fruit” is a subset of “vegetable”. All fruits are vegetables, but many vegetables are not fruits.
I’d put pumpkins in the same boat as tomatoes: a fruit botanically, traditionally a vegetable in a culinary sense, but versatile as a food.
There’s a phrase along the lines of “Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.” Hearing this, I started trying tomatoes in my fruit salads. By Jove, they really do add something. Seriously - try it sometime.
In the culinary sense of how to prepare/cook them, I don’t make any distinction between fruits and vegetables. In the sense of how they should be presented or combined with other fruits and vegetables, there’s nothing really significant there, but people would generally think that fruits can be eaten raw and vegetables need cooking. In the most important sense, which is how the food tastes, it doesn’t matter. However, presentation can affect taste, it’s a subjective type of thing, and in that regard I don’t know of a definitive answer but I think most people think of pumpkin as a vegetable, and if expecting a fruit bowl and given them a bowl of pumpkin it might turn some people off a little.
Carrots, lettuce, brassica oleracea, onions, turnips, cucumbers, these vegetables are eaten raw with fair regularity. Potatoes are one of the few vegetables that absolutely require cooking.
Addendum: fruit shall also include those plants you can eat with a runcible spoon.
Others that require cooking include kidney beans, lima beans, taro root and cassava. Some others probably won’t make you sick, but wouldn’t be palatable raw, such as eggplant, artichoke, sweet potato and bitter melon. Personally, I think kale is horrible raw, but some people insist it’s edible that way.
To me, the culinary distinction between fruits and vegetables has nothing to do with cooking. It’s how it’s used: a fruit is more dessert-like. It’s a fuzzy distinction. As we’ve seen, there are plenty of cases where something could be considered either a fruit or a vegetable depending on context.
Preferably in a beautiful pea-green boat in the company of an owl and a pussy-cat.
A vegetable would be something that one would eat in a savory dish.
Without sugar, pumpkins taste like ass. I would never eat them in a savory dish.
Given that they are a fruit botanically and should only ever be eaten in desserts, I think it’s reasonable to call them a fruit.
I would actually say that pumpkin is better in savory applications than sweet ones. In terms of pie, sweet potato “out-pumpkins” pumpkin pie.
Sweet Gem lettuce and romaine is quite decent sautéed or roasted.
Nah, pumpkins go quite well in savory dishes. Southern Indian cuisine and I think some African cuisines use pumpkin as a vegetable, I’ve done it before (including cooking them into rice dishes).
In Chinese food, lettuce is more often cooked than eaten raw. There are even special varieties of lettuce bred for cooking. A Chinese restaurant near me has cooked lettuce on the menu - I’ve had it, and like it quite a bit.
In the Little House series, the Ingalls family ate their tomatoes with sugar.
Ma Ingalls made a green pumpkin pie that Pa thought was apple pie.
I guess life on the prairie does make people insane.
For that matter, we think of papayas and mangoes as culinary ‘fruits’, but some cultures use the unripe “green” mangoes or papayas as salad vegetables.
At least she didn’t make it with Ritz crackers.
