this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
956 points (99.5% liked)

196

16725 readers
2217 users here now

Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.

Rule: You must post before you leave.

^other^ ^rules^

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ProstheticBrain@sh.itjust.works 92 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Fun fact: "Black olives, though labeled as “ripe” on supermarket cans, actually aren’t: these, a California invention, are green olives that have been cured in an alkaline solution, and then treated with oxygen and an iron compound (ferrous gluconate) that turns their skins a shiny patent-leather black."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/olives--the-bitter-truth

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] ProstheticBrain@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's worth noting that there are naturally occurring "black" olives, but they tend to have a sort of purple hue, there are also sun dried black olives that are kind of wrinkly.

But those ink black ones you get on pizzas? Nah.

[–] aStonedSanta@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month ago

Those fake ones are my favorite haha. Used to get scolded cause I’d eat the whole can on thanksgiving lmao

[–] sour@feddit.org 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's also the only food where ferrous gluconate is allowed to be in, at least in Germany (and EU I guess). For everything else it's forbidden.

Actual black olives exist, but they're expensive.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Actual black olives exist, but they're expensive

😦

What have I been buying from Del Monte for ~$4?

[–] sour@feddit.org 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Green olives that have been artificially blackened.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

Reverse-greenwashing.

[–] quinkin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

These?

If so they are real olives, not whatever everyone is talking about.

[–] sour@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago

They're also not called black olives, though. If that's what they meant, those are natural.

[–] puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

even NatGeo with a fucking wall, I love the internet

copy pasted the entire article before the popup so you don't have to (spoiler bc big wall of text lol)The Bitter Truth About Olives

Thank goodness we figured out how to press olives into oil, because eating them raw is not a pleasant option. ByRebecca Rupp July 1, 2016 •6 min read

A luscious-looking olive, ripe off the sun-warmed tree, is horrible.

The substance that renders it essentially inedible is oleuropein, a phenolic compound bitter enough to shrivel your teeth. The bitterness is a protective mechanism for olives, useful for fending off invasive microorganisms and seed-crunching mammals. In the wild, olives are dispersed by birds, who avoid the bitterness issue by swallowing them whole.

Given the awfulness of the au naturel olive, you can’t help but wonder why early humans, after the first appalling bite, didn’t shun the olive tree forever.

The answer, of course, is olive oil. The olive is a drupe or stone fruit, like cherries, peaches, and plums, in which a fleshy outer covering surrounds a pit or stone, which in turn encases a seed. In the case of the olive, the outer flesh contains up to 30 percent oil—a concentration so impressive that the English word oil comes from the ancient Greek elaia, which means olive.

Archaeological and scientific evidence indicates that the olive tree (Olea europaea) was most likely first cultivated on the border between Turkey and Syria, spreading from there throughout the Mediterranean, to Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece, Italy, France, and Spain. People in the eastern Mediterranean have been grinding olives for oil the last 6,000-8,000 years. Olive oil was used for cooking, cosmetics, medicine, and in lamps. The original Olympic torch burned olive oil. The ancient city-state of Athens was said to have been named for the deity who gave Greek culture its greatest gift: Poseidon made a bid for the prize by producing the horse, but Athena won hands down by creating the olive tree.

The Old Testament is awash in references to olives, listed along with such desirables as honey, figs, grapes, and pomegranates. To destroy an enemy’s olive trees, in Old Testament days, was the ultimate act of war. “Except the vine,” wrote Pliny the Elder in the first century CE, “there is no plant which bears a fruit of as great importance as the olive.” Olives ripen on a tree in Duoro Valley, Portugal. Photograph by Michael Melford, Nat Geo Image Collection

According to food writer Harold McGee, it was the Romans who most likely came up with the technique that put the olive fruit itself on the dinner table. Earlier people had discovered that olives could be debittered by soaking them in repeated changes of water, a painstaking process that took many months. This was somewhat improved by fermenting the olives in brine, which was marginally quicker, but the Romans found that supplementing the brine with lye from wood ashes (sodium hydroxide) cut the time required for producing an edible olive from months to hours. (See this Roman recipe for spiced olives.) You May Also Like ENVIRONMENT Your favorite foods may not taste the same in the future. Here's why. SCIENCE Don't trash the peels! The skins of fruits and veggies pack a nutritional punch SCIENCE Your acai bowl has a hidden cost

Olives came to the Americas with the Spaniards: an olive grove was planted in Lima, Peru, in the mid-16th century; and Spanish Franciscans planted olives in mission gardens in California in the 1700s. While these west coast olives thrived, however, attempts to establish olives on the east coast fizzled.

Jefferson was an early olive fan: after an olive-observing Mediterranean vacation taken in 1787 while serving as America’s ambassador to France, he pronounced the olive “the worthiest plant to be introduced in America” and “the richest gift of heaven.” After frost thwarted his efforts at Monticello, he petitioned the South Carolina Society for Promoting Agriculture to plant olive trees. Encouraged, he had 500 olive cuttings shipped home from Aix-en-Provence. Like the Monticello plantings, however, these failed to survive. Jefferson blamed the South Carolinians for neglect and lack of enthusiasm, but chances are the faulty party was the climate: the southeastern United States was too humid to support olive trees.

Over 95 percent of American olives come from climate-friendly California, though this still constitutes less than one percent of the world olive market. Today the lion’s share of global olives comes from Spain. In many places in Europe, olive trees are suffering from disease (See Europe's Olive Trees a Are Dying.)

About 90 percent of the world’s olive crop goes to make olive oil. The remainder is harvested for table olives which, though there are over 2,000 known olive cultivars, are known to most of us in two colors: green and black.

Green olives, the kind found in martinis, are picked green and unripe and then cured. These are often called Spanish olives. Tree-ripened olives, left to themselves, turn purple, due to an accumulation of anthocyanin—the same pigment that puts the purple in Concord grapes.

Black olives, though labeled as “ripe” on supermarket cans, actually aren’t: these, a California invention, are green olives that have been cured in an alkaline solution, and then treated with oxygen and an iron compound (ferrous gluconate) that turns their skins a shiny patent-leather black. Olive aficionados don’t think much of these, though in my experience, kids love the pitted versions, which are tailor-made for sticking on the ends of fingers.

There’s no need to stop here, however: there’s a wide range of scrumptious olives that many of us never see. For adventurous olive-eaters, check out A Beginner’s Guide to Olives: 14 Varieties Worth Seeking Out.

One last fact: Vincent van Gogh, who appreciated olives, painted 19 pictures of olive trees.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What in the goddamnolivefuckery did I just read ... thx, I hate it.

(fascinating read tho, actual thx for sharing)

[–] exasperation@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Chinese have a method for curing eggs in alkaline solution until they turn black and somewhat translucent, too.

With olives, there's basically no way to eat them off the tree and have them taste edible. They have to be processed in some way to remove the bitter compounds, usually by brining or curing. So using an alkaline brine is one method, and not that uncommon (even for other colors of olives).

Other uses of alkaline compounds in cooking include using a lye bath for browning for baking pretzels or bagels, certain types of springiness and chewiness for noodles (for example, for fresh ramen), and processing corn into cornmeal through nixtamalization.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes, I've known abut those eggs, what fresh olives taste like, and lye in cooking, I was surprised by the ferrous gluconate.