{"id":3238,"date":"2015-03-15T21:12:32","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T21:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3238"},"modified":"2016-08-13T23:09:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T23:09:10","slug":"its-fruit-but-not-as-we-know-it-how-bubbleberries-can-look-like-strawberries-and-taste-of-gum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/its-fruit-but-not-as-we-know-it-how-bubbleberries-can-look-like-strawberries-and-taste-of-gum\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s fruit, but not as we know it: how bubbleberries can look like strawberries and taste of gum"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Simon Cotton<\/a>, University of Birmingham<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

British supermarket Waitrose is marketing \u201cbubbleberries\u201d in some of its stores, describing them as resembling a small strawberry that is \u201cbeautifully fragrant, with the unmistakable taste of bubblegum\u201d. They are admittedly better smelling and tastier than most strawberries in the supermarket. So what is their secret?<\/p>\n

If you buy strawberries in a shop today, it is almost certain that they will be the \u201cgarden strawberry\u201d, a hybrid species of Fragaria \u00d7 ananassa<\/em>. This seems to have arisen quite fortuitously in 18th-century Europe, as an accidental cross between two imports into France, Fragaria chiloensis<\/em> from the western side of America and Fragaria virginiana<\/em>, from the eastern side of America. This hybrid acquired the characteristics of fruit that was both large and red, and over the centuries breeders have striven to produce strawberries with these characteristics, as well as others including long shelf-life and freedom from disease.<\/p>\n

The result is that today, with the assistance of air-freight, we can buy strawberries all year round. This has come at a price, as genes for the production of key sensory molecules have been lost, which is why shoppers often complain that their strawberries have a rather bland taste. This is the result of a kind of \u201cfunnel effect\u201d, a breakdown of genetic diversity \u2013 inbreeding, if you like.<\/p>\n

Scientific researchers have made an intensive study of the hundreds of different molecules that contribute to the smell of strawberries. Strawberries get their flavour from a blend of odorant molecules \u2013 they contain no single \u201cstrawberry-smell\u201d molecule<\/a> \u2013 which is why there is so much variation in flavour from one species to the next.<\/p>\n

Experts talk about particular sensory characteristics<\/a> of strawberries, which include caramel, fruity, green, milky lactone-like and buttery. There must be a balance of these in a fruit for it to smell right. For example, too much lactone leads to a strawberry that reminds you of a peach. Unripe strawberries have an excessive \u201cgreen\u201d smell, due to molecules like hexenal, the compound you smell when grass is cut. The caramel \u201cnote\u201d comes from two molecules known as furaneol and mesifurane, while fruity smells come from a family of molecules called esters.<\/p>\n

Researchers have found that wild strawberries have more intense aromas and richer flavours, not just because they contain greater amounts of these molecules, but they also contain a wider range. Some molecules, such as the highly aromatic terpenoids, are only found in wild strawberries.<\/p>\n

This is where bubbleberries come in. They are described as \u201cresembling small strawberries\u201d \u2013\u00a0that\u2019s because they are small strawberries, long known as musk strawberries.<\/p>\n

The musk strawberry (Fragaria moschata<\/em>) is known as hautbois in French. This name was anglicised to \u201chautboys\u201d, and this is the \u201cinfinitely superior\u201d strawberry which Jane Austen describes in Emma. Hautboys were very scarce then, and they were to become scarcer, as they are harder to cultivate than other varieties and do not travel well.<\/p>\n

Today they can be discovered growing wild, particularly in highland parts of central Europe. Austrian and German scientists have in recent years identified many of the molecules responsible for their strong smell. Partly it seems to be due to the caramel-like mesifuran and furaneol but also to large amounts of methyl and ethyl esters, with a molecule called methyl butyrate especially significant, as well as methyl anthranilate (you may have smelt it in grapes).<\/p>\n

Molecules such as methyleugenol and eugenol \u2013 found in cloves \u2013 give a spicy note, but some molecules are yet to be identified. Get hold of some musk strawberries and see if it becomes your favourite variety, as it was for Franklin Roosevelt and Jane Austen.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Simon Cotton, University of Birmingham British supermarket Waitrose is marketing \u201cbubbleberries\u201d in some of its stores, describing them as resembling a small strawberry that is \u201cbeautifully fragrant, with the unmistakable taste of bubblegum\u201d. They are admittedly better smelling and tastier than most strawberries in the supermarket. So what is their secret? If you buy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":6021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3238"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3239,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3238\/revisions\/3239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}