Cacao, Cocoa, Chocolate: Almost everything about Chocolate is miraculous. We encounter it as bars of chocolate liquor or tins of cocoa powder. Cooks who wish to control preparation would search a market for processed Chocolate seed, or for Nibs, which are bits of the roasted Cacao seed (called “beans.”) People who grow and handle Cacao know that seed mature inside a small, football-shaped fruit called a Pod. Morphologists cannot seem to be happy with that overly-broad term, but have little more wisdom to bring to the discussion. Some studies refer to the fruit as a Berry, but it’s really more like a leathery melon with seed born in a cavity, so Berry seems wrong. I sort of wonder if we should just accept the word Pod.
Things are easier for the Systematist, who is very happy to stash Cacao products near Okra, Roselle, and the infamous tropical fruit, Durian (which, along with Okra and Roselle is in the Hibiscus family).
