Friday, April 18, 2014

P Is For Pomegranate

Pomegranates are an amazing fruit. They have a tantalizingly sweet, yet very sharp taste, a magnificent crimson red color and are full of all sorts of vitamins and minerals. I have loved this odd package of color and flavor since a young boy, and was rather excited to blog about it. The first thing I had originally planned on doing was talking about how this fruit got its nick name “Indian apple”; I have always called it this and became interested on the history behind it. It turns out, I couldn’t find anything about the name online or how it came about. I was so surprised! I thought everyone used the term Indian apple so I just assumed that it would have been a popular topic online. I was also under the impression that pomegranates originated here in the USA, which I was also dead wrong about.

Contrary to my popular belief, pomegranate is widely believed to have originated in Iran. Thanks to the ancient trade routes, the pomegranate made its way across the Middle East, through Europe and eventually Asia. The pomegranate wasn’t introduced to the fruit until about 1769, when Spanish settles visited California and Latin America.

In the United States, the pomegranate is largely popular for its acute flavor. In other parts of the world, the pomegranate tree is used widely for decoration as well. In Japan and Korea, the plant is used frequently in Bonsai for its unique bark
A freshly opened pomegranate
attributes. As for myself, I love cooking with it just as much as I enjoy eating it plain. I really enjoy using pomegranate juice in sauces and salad dressings that I make, and I love using the seeds with breakfast either in yogurt, a bowl of oatmeal or just in a smoothie.

Do you know the story behind the Indian apple name? Even though my search came up fruitless (pun intended), I would still love to know the origin of the name! Thanks for reading; I hope to see you tomorrow when I will be covering the ingredient “quinoa”.

Till next time,

~Mr. McLovin


  1. I recently read that the apple Eve ate was actually a pomegranate. Have you come across that, too? Hope you'll visit me at

  2. I came across a few little articles about that, but it seems like it is hard to determine what was the actual fruit from that event. Also, there was some confusion with the translation of pomegranate in some languages which may have caused some uncertainty with what the fruit may have been from the Adam and Eve. Thanks for reading, I will be happy to drop by!

  3. I don't know where it's name came from, the only bit of history I know about it is that it was because of the pomegranate we get Winter as Persephone ate some of the seeds in the underworld. It's a very pretty fruit and good for adding as a decoration on the fruit bowl cut open.

  4. I see your theme is about 'Foods'...some of them a bit different and all of them good fuel for the furnace. I am visiting from the AtoZ home page where you're link was found in the comments. Glad I stopped by, as I have a pomegranate tree that up until now has served as food for fotos rather than my kitchen. Thanks for all the suggestions for using them in the kitchen. As a kid, I did eat the seeds, and I have imbibed the drink. I'm looking forward to browsing your previous posts and catching up. I hope you will have a chance to stop's my link....Sue at CollectInTexas Gal..

  5. My only axe to grind with the fruit is that it take such a lot of work to make it edible. Sigh.