It has long been a fruit seller’s dream: a sweet piece of citrus that has no seeds to spit out, that peels as easily as a candy bar and that is available for at least half the year. Could there be a more convenient snack food? Ironically, the newest thing in citrus is also one of the oldest.
Mandarins (we used to call them tangerines) are one of the three original citrus families—the other two being the seldom seen citrons and pummelos. All the other citrus—including oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruits—are hybrid results of crosses between those three groups.
As you might expect with a heritage so long, the family tree of the mandarin is incredibly diverse. One leading citrus botanist divides mandarins into thirty-five separate groups (and each group into dozens, even scores, of separate varieties). The signal feature of all mandarins is a thin peel that is easy to remove, rather than clinging tightly to the inner fruit as is true with other citrus. This trait is variable: the skin of some mandarins is so loose that at maturity it touches the fruit at only a couple of spots; other mandarins are only marginally easier to peel than an everyday orange. The Clementine—the original “tangerine,” so called because the first fruit was imported to the United States via the Moroccan port of Tangier—has been around for more than a century and can be seedless. The Satsuma, a Japanese mandarin, is even older. Most Satsuma varieties are reliably seedless.
Shirttail cousins include crosses between pure mandarins and other citrus. The most popular are tangelos (Minneola being the prime variety), which are the result of crossing mandarins and pummelos, which look like giant grapefruits. Tangelos are larger than most mandarins but also are easy to peel. They usually have a small “neck” at the stem end. The tangor, or Temple orange, is probably the result of a cross between a mandarin and an orange, although some experts hold out the possibility that it is a variety of tangelo.
The hard part has been getting a seedless mandarin to market later than mid-January. Until recently, the vast majority of American mandarins came from Florida and with the exception of the Murcott (popularly called the Honey), mandarins were tough to find later than Christmas. Even the Murcotts were almost always done by early March. There were other complications, too. Clementines, for example, are seedless only when they are grown in isolation, away from other citrus. This is extremely inconvenient for growers, who like to have a range of fruits to offer.
Until the early 1990s, mandarins represented a minor part of the American citrus market—no more than 5 percent a year. Then came a wake-up call from Spain. The largest exporter of fresh citrus in the world, Spain started sending boatloads of Clementines to the United States and found a downright eager market. From 1996 to 2000, Spanish shipments of Clementines increased fivefold, to more than 200 million pounds a year.
That got the attention of California’s citrus growers, many of whom were getting squeezed in the souring orange market. California has the advantage of a cooler growing climate than Florida, so it can produce mandarins much later in the year. California growers began planting great swaths of mandarins in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley in the late 1990s, more than doubling the state’s previous plantings in just five years and drawing nearly even with Florida. From 1998 to 2005, California’s acreage increased from about 8,000 acres to more than 18,000, and Florida’s plantings decreased. During the same period plant breeders at the University of California at Riverside released a series of new seedless mandarin hybrids that have the potential to extend the season well into early summer.
Although Spain produces about 2 million tons of mandarins every year and still dominates the global market, the United States grows 40 percent of the grapefruits in the world. (The name comes from the fact that the decidedly ungrapelike fruit grows in clusters at the ends of branches.) The origin of the grapefruit is unclear, but most botanists believe it is a cross between the pummelo and a sweet orange. It was first described on a plantation in Barbados in 1837 and was introduced in Florida not long after.
Grapefruits are beloved by growers and retailers for their remarkable durability. The ripe fruit of most varieties will hold on the tree for months, waiting for the most opportune time for harvest. Once picked, grapefruits will last for weeks, even when kept at cool room temperature.
Florida grows more than 80 percent of the U.S. harvest, primarily the white Marsh variety. Texas is a distant second, with less than 15 percent of the Florida total. The state is best known for its Star Ruby and Ruby Red deep pink grapefruits, which get their color from the flavorless pigment lycopene. These grapefruits turned up in the early twentieth century as chance mutations and quickly found ready consumers.
The pummelo, a related fruit, can be as big as a human head and has thick skin with lots of coarse white pith. Most pummelos taste very sweet, primarily because they are so low in acid. The fruit is extremely dry, so much so that the most common way to prepare it is by breaking each segment into individual vesicles—those little beads of fruit that are practically invisible in richer, moister citrus.
A delicious grapefruit-pummelo cross in California called the “Oroblanco” is slowly finding an audience, thanks to a particularly circuitous marketing path. Originally introduced in the early 1980s, the Oroblanco was praised for its fine flavor—it is very sweet but is balanced by a bracing astringency. Because the fruit is slow to color, it fell from favor after only a few years. Then Israeli growers renamed the fruit “Sweetie” and began exporting it to Japan, basing an ad campaign on the fact that this fruit is sweet even when green. Now California growers are beginning to give the variety another chance.
WHERE THEY’RE GROWN: Mandarins are split almost equally between Florida and California, with a significant number of Clementines being imported from Spain during the holidays. Florida dominates the grapefruit market in terms of sheer numbers, but there are also important plantings in Texas, California and Arizona.
HOW TO CHOOSE: The skins of mandarins should feel firm, not wrinkled. This is a little harder to discern with some varieties, which “puff up” when ripe, with the skin separating from the flesh, but there should certainly be no soft spots. The fruit should be heavy for its size, and the fragrance should be clean and fresh. Mandarins that are past their prime will smell a little fermented. The skins of grapefruits should be smooth, and the fruit should be very heavy. Check the stem ends as well—when the fruit gets a little old, the end will start to sink into the fruit.
HOW TO STORE: Because of their thin skins, mandarins should be refrigerated as soon as you get them home. Do not wash them, as water will hasten the breakdown of their peels. Grapefruit have thicker skins and so will last a little longer at room temperature. This is particularly true for varieties with a lot of pummelo heritage—their rinds can be so thick that they will last for weeks.
HOW TO PREPARE: Mandarins usually are easy to peel, but there may be a lot of stringy white pith that remains attached to the fruit. Since it will fall off and look messy in a dish, it should be removed as well. Simply run your thumbnail along the outside of the fruit; the strings will pull away. Have a damp towel nearby to wipe the sticky strings from your fingers. Peel grapefruits with a sharp knife, just as you would oranges. The varieties that have thicker skins are even easier to peel: cut off the top and bottom, score the skin and pull the peel away with your thumbs.
ONE SIMPLE DISH: After a big meal, I love to serve a bowl of mandarins with dried dates or prunes or with simple sugar cookies. There are few smells more satisfying than the fragrance when you peel them. Serve grapefruits the same way, but peel them first.