Rediscovering Calabria’s mystical white olives | Hacker News Reader

Rediscovering Calabria’s mystical white olives

atlasobscura.com

69 pointsThevet8 comments

As an olive lover I read this whole article just trying to imagine what they taste like.

Interesting, sounds like the oil is transparent and "spicy":

> But while Calabrians venerated the white olive, they rarely consumed it. Rotella has uncovered very few past or present instances of the oil or olives being used as a part of local cuisine, besides accounts from farmers of frying the olives and eating them as a frugal, simple snack while working. The oil from white olives is transparent and, according to Rotella, was generally considered too spicy and unusual for the Calabrian palate.

I'm curious as well.

You might be interested in this Cooking Issues episode with Nick Coleman from Grove and Vine discussing olive oils. They discuss fruite noir, an oil made from slightly fermented olives and it sounds fascinating to try. I'd like to find some to try it soon.

https://shows.acast.com/cooking-issues-with-dave-arnold/epis... https://cronotempvscollectors.com/fruite-noir-the-fruitiness... https://groveandvine.com/

Often fruits that are identical vary by taste a lot while fruits of alternative color don't taste different "at all", especially if blind-tested. I don't expect this to be any different from other local olives.

From the article:

> The oil from white olives is transparent and, according to Rotella, was generally considered too spicy and unusual for the Calabrian palate.

But that does not hold for black and green olives, which taste very different. Not to mention, TFA has

> The oil from white olives […] was generally considered too spicy and unusual for the Calabrian palate.

Because although different varieties are probably used (to optimise yield or taste or whatever for that stage) it's 'just' different levels of ripeness that makes them green or black (or purple).

I guess I was imprecise because I almost never see "black" black olives that haven’t been colored. What I meant by black olives were Kalamata olives [0] which are a different variety with a very distinct taste. While I guess they technically exist in other colors like green, they aren’t edible in green ;)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamata_olive

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