The Back Page : Chilling News

You’re out shopping and you see peaches at a great price (it’s not likely this year, but more about that later). They’re rock-hard, but you buy a big bag, figuring you’ll take them home and they’ll ripen in the refrigerator. A week later, you’ve got nothing but a sack of soft, mealy, tasteless fruit. What happened?

As it turns out, the refrigerator is exactly the wrong place to store summer fruit.

Research by Carlos Chrisosto, a post-harvest physiologist with UC Davis, shows that the best temperature for storing peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots is just above freezing, between 32 and 35 degrees. The perfect temperature for ripening them is in the mid-60s. The absolute worst temperature range is between 36 and 46 degrees.

Most refrigerators, says the Maytag Corp., are set between 37 and 40.

“I know, this is a problem,” says Chrisosto. “Normally what happens when fruit ripens at that temperature, it develops a mealy texture and you get some browning inside too. In some cases, you get off flavors. These are all internal symptoms; the fruit on the outside looks like it’s perfect.”

Chrisosto’s recommendation is to ripen the fruit outside the refrigerator (he recommends putting it in a paper bag), and when it begins to ripen--when the flesh gives to gentle pressure--put it in the refrigerator.

This is not just a problem in the home. Too-cool temperatures can occur any time after the fruit is picked--at the packing shed, at the wholesale level and at the supermarket. So pay attention to how the fruit is stacked when you go shopping. If it’s in the refrigerator case, you’re better off passing it by.

Of course, this is hardly the year to be worrying about storing great fruit. This is the year to worry about finding any. Predictions for this season’s harvest seem to get lower every week. The latest word is that peaches and nectarines will be roughly 33% below, while plums will be a whopping 46%.

Going into July, the heart of the season, peaches and plums were actually doing a bit better than predicted--peaches were down 27% and nectarines were down 21%. Plums were right on target.

What this means is higher prices at the market and--as the corollary of the principle that big years for quantity are usually the best years for quality--some pretty wan fruit. Though temperatures are getting back to normal in the San Joaquin Valley, there simply hasn’t been enough sunshine to get great taste.