Yes, pumpkin really is a fruit & so are these 'vegetables'

02 December 2016 - 02:00 By Toni Jaye Singer
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Thanks to 'MasterChef Australia', the most Googled question in South Africa over the past week was "Is pumpkin a fruit?".

Episode 30 of the hit Ozzy cooking contest, which recently aired on DStv, was a lucky dip elimination challenge.

During the challenge contestants had to create a dish based on the core ingredient and type of cuisine they'd randomly picked from bags proffered by the judges.

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After selecting 'American' and 'Fruit', Zoe opted to make a pumpkin pie confidently declaring that she'd learned at varsity that a pumpkin is a fruit.

This sent MasterChef fans into a whirl of anxiety: what if Zoe was wrong and she'd hinged her place in the competition on an incorrect fact?

South Africans took to the Internet to settle the matter, resulting in the query "Is pumpkin a fruit?" being the most asked question on Google SA for the past week.

To set the record straight, Oxford Dictionaries lists the botanical definition of a fruit as "the seed-bearing structure of a plant".

Flavour is where the confusion comes in. Cooks tend to incorrectly classify ingredients traditionally used in savoury dishes, like pumpkins, as being vegetables rather than fruits.

Here are some other common fruits that masquerade as vegetables:

• Aubergine

• Olive

• Butternut

• Tomato

• Red, yellow and green peppers

• Avocado

• Cucumber

• Baby marrow

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