pressure to break through them. The moist
vegetable is crisp and juicy, the limp one
chewy and less juicy. Fortunately, water loss
is largely reversible: soak a limp vegetable in
water for a few hours and its cells will absorb
water and reinflate. Crispness can also be
enhanced by making sure that the vegetable is
icy cold. This makes the cell-wall cement
stiff, so that when it breaks under pressure, it
seems brittle.
Mealiness and Meltingness: The Role of
Cell Walls Fruits and vegetables can
sometimes have a mealy, grainy, dry texture.
This results when the cement between
neighboring cells is weak, so that chewing
breaks the cells apart from each other rather
than breaking them open, and we end up with
lots of tiny separate cells in our mouth. Then
there’s the soft, melting texture of a ripe
peach or melon. This too is a manifestation of
weakened cell walls, but here the weakening