The Avocado & Its History

The creamy, luscious avocado is, botanically speaking, a berry. Produced by trees in the laurel family, there are hundreds of varieties of avocados in the wild. All have leathery, dark skin that encloses and protects the fruit’s tender pale green flesh and single, large pit.

That we even have avocados today is a stroke of evolutionary luck. We know they originated in the Americas over 13,000 years ago. For millennia, they were feasted on by enormous, now-extinct land mammals such as giant sloths who enjoyed avocados as much as we do. Before these creatures vanished, they scattered avocado pits across the region, ensuring the fruit’s survival into human times by a process that still baffles botanists. We humans have been eating avocados for around 10,000 years. Some civilizations ate them sliced as stand-alone food, often sprinkled with salt, sugar, or honey. Over time, indigenous tribes purposefully cultivated avocado trees, preserving the best varieties across the Americas. Avocados made their way to Europe on the ships of Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in the sixteenth century. The Aztec word for avocado, ahuacatl, became aguacate in Spanish. In the USA, this fruit with a tough, knobbly outer hide was known as an alligator pear until around 1915. Given its smooth and creamy interior texture, the word for avocado on the Indian subcontinent can be roughly translated as “butter fruit.” In Taiwan, it’s called a “cheese pear.” The mellow flavor and silky texture of avocados make them perfectly suited for both savory and sweet dishes, from Mexican guacamole and Israeli hummus to Brazilian ice cream. And Indonesians love their “drunk ice,” a chilled non-alcoholic confection made with avocado, sweetened condensed milk, coconut milk and tropical fruit. Our philosophy has always been, why choose one when you can do both. Avocados in Bloom provides an array of recipes for cocktails, starters, mains, and desserts, so you can eat avocados morning ‘til night.