On Food and Cooking

destinations, then gassed with ethylene to
ripen them for the produce bin. Consumers
can hasten the process by enclosing the fruits
in a paper bag with a ripe fruit (plastic traps
too much moisture) to expose them to an
active ethylene emitter and concentrate the
ethylene gas in the air around them.
Nonclimacteric fruits like pineapples, citrus
fruits, most berries, and melons don’t store
starch or improve markedly after harvest, so
their quality depends mainly on how far they
had ripened on the plant. They’re best when
picked and shipped as ripe as possible, and
there’s nothing consumers can do to influence
their quality: we simply have to choose good
ones in the first place.
With just a few exceptions (pears,
avocados, kiwis, bananas), even climacteric
fruits will be much better if they’re allowed to
ripen on the plant, from which they can
continue to accumulate the raw materials of
flavor until the harvest.