To All,
Pixie Tangerine and Minneola Tangelo
You have read about the Sumo mandarin tangerine (20 Feb 2015) with its fetching topknot. Cruising through Whole Foods on 6 Feb 2015, I found two more citrus fruits with the same eye-catching silhouette--the pixie tangerine and the Minneola tangelo (PLU #94383). The term that is usually used, it turns out, is not "topknot' but rather "nipple," "neck," or "knob." I will use knob. (I did not give you the PLU code for the pixie tangerine, which its sticker announced as #3188; see the picture below of the generic sticker. If you look this number up at the PLU site, you find, "FOR USE WITH ALL COMMODITIES: Retailer Assigned." This means, according to the PLU User Guide, p. 7, that this is an unassigned code that a store can freely use for its own purposes. For example, if a store wants to sell a fruit that does not have a PLU code, then the store can put a sticker on this fruit with an unassigned code and use this code internally to identify this fruit.) The Minneola tangelo cost a flat dollar. (On Feb 10 I bought another Minneola tangerine at Trader Joe's for $0.69, and on Feb 12 I got a third at Wegman's for $0.75.) The pixie tangerine cost $2.49/pound; since mine weighed 0.39 pounds, it cost $0.97.
The pixie tangerine was developed in 1927 at the University of California Riverside Citrus Research Center and released to the public in 1965. The pictures below show the display at Whole Foods and an example of creative marketeering.
A tangelo is typically a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo, hence the name. (Sometimes the cross is with a tangerine and a grapefruit, which, recall (19 Oct 2014), is a cross between a pomelo and an orange. (While Whole Foods uses "Mineola," Wikipedia insists on the spelling "Minneola" since this fruit is named after Minneola. Florida. The PLU site, Trader Joe's, and Wegman's all side with Wikipedia, so I will go with "Minneola.") The Minneola tangelo was developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Horticultural Research Station in Orlando, FL, and released in 1931. The Minneola tangelo is a cross between a Dancy tangerine and a Duncan grapefruit. Some marketeer looked up from his hash-pipe, contemplated the shape of this fruit, and gave it the alternate name of "honeybell," which I will ignore; this fancy name is apparently used mainly in gift baskets.
Now it's time to eat these things. Both peeled easily by hand. The pixie tangerine had a piercing sweetness that recalled the tangerines of my youth. The Minneola tangelo had a slight tartness. Both were seedless. My pictures show the two varieties side-by-side, with the pixie tangerine is on the left and the Minneola on the right.
- Both fruits unpeeled.
- Both fruits peeled.
- Both peel stars.
My Minneola was pretty soft, so I wondered if I had gotten one past its prime. For this reason, I bought a second one at Trader Joe's. I was careful to buy the firmest one in the display. When I ate it, the taste was about the same and I found that it also was unpleasantly soft, though not as soft as the one that I got at Whole Foods. Moreover, the Trader Joe's Minneola was full of seeds, and this made it something of a chore to eat. The one I got at Wegman's was also soft, but at least it had no seeds. (It turns out that if a Minneola tree is pollinated by another Minneola it will exhibit low productivity but its fruit will be seedless; if it is pollinated by a different variety of tree, e.g., another variety of tangelo or a temple orange, it will be much more productive but will have seeds. Therefore, a grower must decide how to make this trade-off between productivity and seeds. As we have just seen, different growers make this trade-off in different ways. Unfortunately, you cannot tell from inspecting the Minneola in the store which strategy the grower has taken.)
The verdict: The pixie tangerine provides an appealing citrus taste, but, with nothing to especially praise or criticize, it joins the growing list of alternatives that one can turn to for the citrus experience. It is, however, rather expensive, which means that you are paying a premium and not getting anything extra in return. The Minneola tangelo is quite reasonable in price, but its taste is pedestrian, its softness is off-putting, and the possibility of seeds makes it unappealing. All it has going for it is its picturesque silhouette; it is mainly useful in gift baskets.
These two fruits are too obscure to have inspired art works or products.
Citrus Taxonomy
If you are like me, the farrago of faintly distinguished citrus fruits covered in recent e-mails has you wondering what is what. In a future e-mail I hope to bring some order to this mess so that you and I will have some idea of what we are eating. (With this crush of barely distinguishable citrus fruits, you are perhaps starting to appreciate why PLU codes are needed.)
Party Tip
It is time to determine how discerning your guests are. Put before them a collection of perhaps a dozen different citrus fruits. Their problem is to identify the mystery fruits. Have each guest inspect the fruits, taste test the segments, palpate the peels, and write down on the answer sheet the citrus fruits represented. Some determinations will be easy. For example, distinguishing the tiny Murcott from the monster pomelo is child's play. Distinguishing a sweet sumo mandarin tangerine from a neutral pomelo or a sour orange will challenge no one. Distinguishing the characteristic taste of the blood orange from the neutral taste of the navel orange will be within the capacity of many. Distinguishing the various strains of mandarins, clementines, and tangerines, however, will call for discriminatory powers of the highest order and will test even the connoisseur. Make sure that your guests take into account the following characteristics:
- Size of fruit.
- Number of seeds.
- Sweet or sour.
- Secondary tastes once you get past sweet or sour.
- Juiciness.
- Smell.
- Characteristics of the peel (e.g., texture, smell, thickness).
Based on the number that each guest gets right, you will assign each guest a citrus IQ, and the guest with the highest citrus IQ will be crowned king or queen of citrus. (If there is a tie, hold a run-off in which your guests are blindfolded.) The king or queen will announce his or her favorite citrus fruit, and for the next year everyone will address his or her royal highness with the appropriate title, e.g., as King Mandarin Sumo Tangerine or Queen Cara Cara. Using your desktop tee shirt publishing system, you will immediately create for the winner a tee-shirt with a picture of his or her favorite citrus fruit on the front and his or her title on the back. By forcing your guests to attend closely to the nuances of citrus fruit, you will start them down the road to becoming connoisseurs. Make this a yearly contest, which will inspire in your guests the spirit of healthy emulation that will spur them to study and experiment so that they can improve their citrus IQ and perhaps in the next year win the coveted crown of king or queen of citrus.
