That was the question?

Valleysgirl

Last night we went to a Quiz evening here in Oz (on hols staying with our daughter), one of the questions , is a cucumber a fruit or Veg ? Now as a child on hols with my parents we would play Boy Girl Fruit or flower. So I knew the trick one was Tomato - fruit not Veg. So we answered Veg, low and behold it's a Fruit !,We learnt something new then ! Anyway good fun and we weren't last in the Quiz out of the 14 Aussie teams our family team Welsh Dragons were 8th 

Hostafan1

I'd have said fruit. If it develops from a flower ,it's fruit.  Easy when it's apples and pears, but the same goes for tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, peppers etc . I'd say, technically , they're all fruit.

AuntyRach

I agree Hosta. Botanically, if it has seeds then it is ‘fruit’, but obviously in common language, and culinary terms, anything savoury if usually classed as ‘vegetable’. 

It’s a bit like milk - this is technically secreted by mammals but we now have nut ‘milk’ etc. 

Oo - it’s like QI! 

josusa47

In a quiz, you can only give one answer, but in practice, the answer depends on whether you're the cook or the gardener.  Some dietary items are fruits in the garden, but turn into vegetables on the way to the kitchen.

Dovefromabove

I would’ve said it’s a fruit ... think we addressed it at school along with tomatoes, peppers, marrows etc. 

The fact that we think of it as a veg is because of the rather binary way we in the West think of our food ... sweet or savoury, fruit or veg.  

Some other cultures don’t have this division in their food and a lot of fruits are included in what Western Europeans might think of as ‘savoury’ dishes. I can remember a chap of my acquaintance being horrified when he found sultanas in his Peshwari naan, nor did I help when I told him that the Daddies sauce he happily ate with his breakfast sausages contained dates.  Apparently he ‘didn’t agree with’ mixing sweet and savoury, and always refused apple sauce with roast pork, feeling somehow that it was ‘wrong’. 

wild edges

Pork and fruit are like ellipses. Sometimes you get a perfectly balanced spoonful of not too sweet apple sauce in your rare-breed hogroast roll washed down with a pint of scrumpy on a warm summer's evening and other times you get a ring of pineapple straight from the tin slapped down into the grease on top of a fatty bit of over salty foreign gammon washed down with that synthetic berry flavoured excuse for a cider they have on tap in crappy pubs now all enjoyed on a wet bank holiday weekend lunchtime when you'd rather be working in the  garden...

wild edges

Also isn't odd that cucumber and melons are pretty much the same plant but we classify the fruit differently?

Nollie

I would say it’s a fruiting vegetable as opposed to a rooting or a shooting one, but would have answered fruit. Wasn’t there a recent survey that said 20% of the population thought potatoes grow on trees?! Peanuts are legumes not nuts and they grow in the ground. I’m surprised they haven’t banned calling nut milk milk, since a deli was prevented from calling vegetarian cheese cheese. Nuts 

Hostafan1

Nollie said:

 I’m surprised they haven’t banned calling nut milk milk, since a deli was prevented from calling vegetarian cheese cheese. Nuts 

I'm amazed that Quorn get away with "Quorn chicken"

Nollie

Probably because the 🐓 union is all for slaughtering quorn instead of their feathered members, @Hostafan1

wild edges

Nollie said:

I’m surprised they haven’t banned calling nut milk milk, since a deli was prevented from calling vegetarian cheese cheese. Nuts 

They have apparently. In the UK the FSA brought in the rules in 2010 and the EU courts caught up in 2017 (thanks Google).