Is there a correlation between the color of a cherry and its tartness?
Life is not, as we know, a bowl of cherries. Especially the light red ones that I ate this morning. They seemed sourer that usual.
Then I noticed that the darker, deeper red (almost maroon) cherries in the bowl tended to be sweeter than the lighter red ones.
Was that coincidence, or is there a correlation between cherry color and tartness?
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8 Answers
Yep. Both skin color and sugar content increase with ripeness, so one is a good predictor of the other. That rule only applies among specimens of the same variety, though. Different varieties have differing amounts of anthocyanins (which give the color), and some of the lighter varieties (e.g. Rainier) tend to have high sugar content anyway. Still, within a batch of Rainiers, those with a deeper blush will be sweeter,
Thanks @thorninmud – I have no idea what variety it was; they were at my local Kroger on Saturday morning, and I picked up a pound.
I’ll look for darker ones next time :-)
No, obviously you are not familiar with Rainier cherries, which are among the sweetest.
@marinelife – I wonder if we get that variety in georgia.
Yep- and it’s just like it is with women: the darker, the sweeter. ;-)
I think that at least applies to bing cherries, and probably some others, but probably not all of them.
OTOH, I will admit that Ariel is nicer than Ursula. ;-)
I have very dark tart cherries growing in my yard. Most of the tart cherries from Door County are extremely dark, and extremely tart….so NO, color doesn’t tell you a thing about the cherry flavor.
for the life of me I can’t recall the variety I have in my yard right now, but they are a nice ripe deep color when their ready for picking, and are super tart
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