The zucchini (; : zucchini or zucchinis), courgette () or baby marrow (Cucurbita pepo) is a summer squash, a vining herbaceous plant whose fruit are harvested when their immature seeds and epicarp (rind) are still soft and edible. It is closely related, but not identical, to the marrow; its fruit may be called marrow when mature.
Ordinary zucchini fruit are any shade of green, though the golden zucchini is a deep yellow or orange. At maturity, they can grow to nearly in length, but they are normally harvested at about .
In botany, the zucchini's fruit is a pepo, a berry (the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower) with a hardened epicarp. In cookery, it is treated as a vegetable, usually cooked and eaten as an accompaniment or savory dish, though occasionally used in sweeter cooking.
Zucchini occasionally contain toxic cucurbitacins, making them extremely bitter, and causing severe gastero-enteric upsets. Causes include stressed growing conditions, and cross pollination with ornamental squashes.
Zucchini descends from squashes first domesticated in Mesoamerica over 7,000 years ago, but the zucchini itself was bred in Milan in the late 19th century.
Naming and etymology
The plant has three names in English, all of them meaning 'small marrow': zucchini (an Italian loanword), usually used in the plural form even when only one zucchina is meant, courgette (a French loanword), and baby marrow (South African English). Zucchini and courgette are doublets, both descending from the Latin .
Zucchini
The name zucchini is used in American, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand English. It is loaned from Italian, where is the plural masculine diminutive of ().
In Italian, the masculine (plural: ) is attested earlier and hence preferred by the Accademia della Crusca, the Italian language regulator. The feminine (plural: ) is also found, and preferred by the Italian-language encyclopedia Treccani, which considers to be a Tuscan dialect word.
Zucchini is also used in Canadian French, Danish, German, and Swedish.
Courgette
The name courgette is used in British, Hiberno-, Malaysian, New Zealand, and South African English. It is loaned from French, where () is a diminutive of . Courgette is also used in Dutch.
Baby marrow
The name baby marrow is used in South Africa to name a zucchini harvested when extremely immature, the size of an index finger.
Flower
The female flower is a golden blossom on the end of each emergent zucchini. The male flower grows directly on the stem of the zucchini plant in the leaf axils (where leaf petiole meets stem), on a long stalk, and is slightly smaller than the female. Both flowers are edible and are often used to dress a meal or to garnish the cooked fruit.
Firm and fresh blossoms that are only slightly open are cooked to be eaten, with pistils removed from female flowers, and stamens removed from male flowers. The stems on the flowers can be retained as a way of giving the cook something to hold onto during cooking, rather than injuring the delicate petals, or they can be removed prior to cooking, or prior to serving. There are a variety of recipes in which the flowers may be deep fried as fritters or tempura (after dipping in a light tempura batter), stuffed, sautéed, baked, or used in soups.
History
Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas, specifically Mesoamerica. However, the varieties of green, cylindrical squash harvested immature and typically called "zucchini" were cultivated in northern Italy, as much as three centuries after the introduction of cucurbits from the Americas. It appears that this occurred in the second half of the 19th century, although the first description of the variety under the name zucchini occurs in a work published in Milan in 1901. Early varieties usually appended the names of nearby cities in their names.
The first records of zucchini in the United States date to the early 1920s. It was almost certainly taken to America by Italian immigrants and probably was first cultivated in the United States in California. A 1928 report on vegetables grown in New York State treats 'Zucchini' as one among 60 cultivated varieties of C. pepo.
Culinary uses
When used for food, zucchini are usually picked when under in length, when the seeds are still soft and immature. Mature zucchini can be long or more. These larger ones often have mature seeds and hard skins, requiring peeling and seeding. A zucchini with the flowers attached is a sign of a truly fresh and immature fruit, and it is especially sought after for its sweeter flavor.