Just what is it exactly about tomatoes on the vine that makes them so delicious? So unlike those giant, pale tomatoes you see for sale in your grocer’s produce section?
Well, according to Dr Harry Klee, professor in the Horticultural Science Department at the University of Florida, it’s a complex blend of sugars, acids, and a wide variety of volatile flavour compounds. Mass-produced tomatoes, unlike heirloom tomatoes, have been bred to be large, fast-maturing, and firm (to withstand being harvested by machines). What these tomatoes actually taste like hardly enters into the equation. And Dr Klee is hoping to change all that by isolating those compounds that make heirloom tomatoes so tasty and re-introducing these compounds into mass-produced tomatoes.
If it results in tastier subject matter, I’m all for it!
