On Food and Cooking

Qualities Tart,

aromatic

Strong  flavor, crunchy,

tingly

Common problems in home-pickled
cucumbers include cheesy and rancid off-
flavors, which come from the growth of
undesirable bacteria when there’s not enough
salt or acidity to inhibit them, and hollow
“bloaters,” which are pickles swollen with
carbon dioxide produced by yeasts (or
sometimes by Lactobacillus brevis or
mesentericus) when the salt level is too high.

Olives Fresh olives are practically inedible
thanks to their ample endowment of a bitter
phenolic substance, oleuropein, and its
relatives. The olive tree was first cultivated in
the eastern Mediterranean around 5,000 years
ago, probably as a source of oil. Olive
fermentation may have been discovered when
early peoples learned to remove the bitterness
by soaking the fruit in changes of water. By