Out of all of the interesting chocolate-related facts that surprise people, one of the most surprising tends to be the fact that cocoa "beans," far from being true beans, are actually the plump, buttery-pulp-covered seeds from a somewhat melon-shaped fruit that grows on the trunk of a tropical tree.
This fact, however, often overshadows a lesser known point of interest, which is that the fruit, often called a "pod," is not a pod at all. It is also not a fruit type called a "drupe," though even many academic papers and books make this mistake. Examples of actual drupes are "stone fruits" such as peaches, plums, cherries, and almonds. In other words, drupes have their seeds encased in a hard shell, or endocarp, and this "pit" or "stone" is then surrounded by the, generally, fleshy and edible part of the fruit. Cacao, on the other hand, is arranged quite differently. Cacao fruits have a somewhat thick and tough, though not hard, skin, within which is contained the many pulp-covered seeds. The seeds themselves do not have a hard shell. The fruit is, therefore, not a drupe in the least. What is sometimes referred to as the "shell" of the cocoa bean is nothing more than the dry seed coat of the fermented and dried cacao seed. When the seed is still moist, the seed coat could not be further from anything resembling a shell.
All of this being the case, and after a 2007 conversation with Steve DeVries of DeVries Chocolate really drove this point home, I began to wonder what the accurate botanical classification of a cacao fruit should be, if not a drupe. With this in mind I stumbled across a paper by Douglas Lehrian and Gordon Patterson of the Hershey Foods Corporation, in a collection published in 1983, that mentions quite clearly that the cacao fruit is a berry! The discovery was exciting, but still, I was a bit hesitant to rely on this information alone. I forwarded this find to DeVries, who promised to pass it by some botanists that he knew, and after some weeks, the botanists seemed not to have any major problems with the classification. At last, I thought, we can be relatively certain that the cacao fruit is actually a berry, and at this point I finally shared the findings with my Patric Chocolate blog readers. Yet, this certainty was not to last...
Unknown to me, the cacao fruit drama crept quietly along in the shadows, hidden by the busy chocolate holiday season which runs from October through April. Come June, however, I got an e-mail from DeVries in which he shared the updated opinions of the previously mentioned botanists. Time had allowed them to reflect more thoroughly upon the issue of the cacao fruit, and they were now of a slightly different opinion. Interestingly, the botanists felt that the cacao fruit was actually not a true berry, but instead was closest to a pepo, one of many types of false berries. However, they still did not feel strongly enough about this to make a final pronouncement, and this fact in itself led to additional skepticism on my part.
As I did some research into what exactly a pepo was, having never before encountered the classification, I wrote back to DeVries with my thoughts, some excerpts of which follow:
"As for cacao, it does seem very pepo-like, but I’m starting to wonder if this is a case of the human desire to classify something within an extant system that is really not complex enough for it.
It seems to me that generally in pepos, most of the edible fruit is not directly surrounding each seed as a pulp, but instead there is a type of internal seed layer with a fleshy edible layer right behind it (cucumber, various squash, [most] melons), and right before the “rind.” The cacao fruit certainly looks similar externally to some pepos, though, but I still wonder. Could Theobroma fruits, including cacao, be different types of fruit, yet to be named? Maybe this is why the botanists could be having some reservations--because they are wondering similar things."
Of course, I am no botanist, and my common-sense pronouncements certainly don't settle the issue entirely. For this reason, I was interested to receive a further e-mail from DeVries that included a quote from an 1861 publication of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The following botanical description of the cacao fruit was given:
"The capsule (berry-like,) not dehiscent, quinquelocular, with polysper-
mous compartments, and a ligneous leather-like bark. Seeds
nestling in a buttery fleshy pulp. "
Once again, it is stated that the cacao fruit is not a true berry; rather, it is "berry-like." Still, it doesn't seem that we know enough yet to say what the fruit truly is; we simply keep stating what it isn't. Are we happy enough to note that the cacao fruit is the perfect specimen of the rare and little-known Pepo-Like, False Berry? Perhaps not. So, if luck is on our side, the botanists will not lose interest in the issue either. After all, if they finally conclude that there is no extant classification that accurately includes cacao, then, at last, the botanists might be able to come up with a new classification that finally takes cacao into consideration.
Until then, the cacao fruit mystery continues, but we have come a long way in only one year. I'll be sure to keep you posted if any further botanists decide to weigh in on the issue. Until then, fine, dark Pepo-Like-False-Berry-seed paste maker, Alan McClure, signing off.
