Do you remember when cucumbers had spines?

July 20, 2018 5:48 AM

More specifically, do you recall a time when store-bought cucumbers had spikes or spines on them? If you do, do you remember when they went away?

I was prepping a fat (non-English/American variety) cuke and remarked to my partner that when I was a child, they had spines on them. This blew her mind. She’s never seen one before and at first wasn’t inclined to believe me. Age-wise: I’m in my mid/late-thirties, and she’s thirty. That said, I did survey some younger colleagues, and they remember the spines. We’re all from the Northeast while my partner is not, so perhaps it is regional and not an age difference.

Neither my colleagues nor I could recall when they stopped being spiky.

posted by mountainherder to Food & Drink (18 answers total)

27yo from SE Virginia. I don't remember cukes having spines, but I do remember them having hard, pointy bumps (like this). I haven't seen those bumpy cukes in a grocery store in at least a decade, but FWIW most home-grown cukes I encounter (e.g., from my parents' garden, or from the local farmers' market) are like this.
posted by schroedingersgirl at 5:55 AM on July 20, 2018 [14 favorites]

My understanding is that cucumbers, which grow well in sandy soil, can actually get bits of sand stuck under the skin (put another way, the skin will grow over bits of sand clinging to the cuke). This can cause a bumpy appearance and is why many people peel them. (On a side note, you can soak them in water for a few minutes and the grit will release.) Anyway, I still encounter these bumps on cukes I buy at the farmer's market, but I agree it's rare to find them on supermarket-purchased cucumbers. That said, I'm not sure if I would really call these spines.
posted by CiaoMela at 5:55 AM on July 20, 2018

I grow cucumbers that are both spiky and non spiky.

But I dont' honestly remember when they stopped being spiky in grocery stores. I also don't remember when the english cucumbers became more popular than the fat kind
posted by Ftsqg at 5:56 AM on July 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

OK, so most members of the cucurbit family have spikes, but some varieties of cucumbers are hybrids that have been developed without them. Generally, long "English cucumbers" don't have them, but the smallest "pickling cucumbers" do, and most heirlooms that you'll buy at the farmer's market or grow yourself do, as they haven't been bred out of those varieties. My guess is that your store only carries the long English cucumbers now? Mine has both.
posted by epanalepsis at 5:58 AM on July 20, 2018 [7 favorites]

I assume it's because commercial growers decided to grow varieities without spines. According to this page, English or European cucumbers are spineless and have smaller seeds and just generally sound like the type of cucumber that most people prefer these days. Commercial growers grow whatever there's demand for.

The cukes I grow in my own garden most definitely have spines because when I was picking varieties to grow their presence wasn't a factor and I was mainly looking for compact plant size or heirloom varieities, not spinelessness.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:59 AM on July 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

Farmstands and farmer’s markets here in MA have spiny cucumbers, but our local Whole Foods also carries both the spineless English variety and the regular prickly cucumbers.
posted by lydhre at 6:15 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't think I've seen a cuke in a regular grocery store that didn't have the prickles wiped off (late 30's, grew up in a city in New England). When I was about 11, I had a neighbor with a garden and learned about them then.
posted by tchemgrrl at 6:33 AM on July 20, 2018

Growing up in Manitoba in the '80s, my family always bought the shrink-wrapped "English cucumbers" grown in hothouses in Ontario. I suspect there wasn't much of a local cucumber-growing industry, and anglophone Canadians have always had an extra affinity for "English" things; both factors may have made the variety more popular.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:18 AM on July 20, 2018

I don't remember our UK store-bought cucumbers having spines, and I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I know when we pick our (usually a bit spiny) greenhouse cucumbers, we generally just wipe them firmly with a cloth, which takes off all the spines. So I wouldn't discount the possibility that something similar was happening during packing before spine-free varieties were in common production.
posted by pipeski at 7:55 AM on July 20, 2018

I just bought a Japanese cucumber at farmer's market that was spiny, and I've bought Armenian cukes that were also spiny.

Pickling cucumbers are also spiny.
posted by adamrice at 8:09 AM on July 20, 2018

I'm not sure exactly which commercially grown varieties are responsible for the shift toward increasingly smoother cucumber varieties in the U.S., but the common big, fat yet no-longer-spiny/bumpy slicing cucumbers sold in American grocery stores are NOT English/European hothouse cultivars, which are longer and more slender.
posted by drlith at 8:35 AM on July 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Late 40's adult who grew up in New England here -

I think maybe "spines" is the wrong word. I recall them as being more like....prickers. Very small and sparsely-spaced thorns, almost, the size of a pinpoint.

I also recall them as being fairly easy to "wipe" off with a hand, and often did inadvertently do just that in the process of handling them while peeling. It's possible that supermarkets or big farms just decided to get more diligent about "wiping" the spines off; farmers could do this before crating cucumbers up, or the stockhandlers at grocery stores could do this before putting them on the shelves. Selective breeding for non-pricker types could also be a factor.

I don't recall when this may have happened since I've been getting most of my produce from a CSA for the past ten years. But upon reflection, I've been getting mostly smooth varietals.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:59 AM on July 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: EmpressCallipygos is right, I remember them more as prickers, on the big fat non-English variety. They came off fairly easily, but my mother would nevertheless peel them for us.

With grocery stores, I can imagine the process of washing and waxing them for longer shelf life might be part of it, but I also get the fat ones from my farm share, so perhaps it is a distinct cultivar?
posted by mountainherder at 10:20 AM on July 20, 2018

This article seems to imply that your guess is correct in regards to processing for retail. But it doesn't answer your "when" question.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 10:51 AM on July 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I remember them more as prickers, on the big fat non-English variety. They came off fairly easily, but my mother would nevertheless peel them for us.

My mom peeled them too, and had me peel them when I was helping in the kitchen, but I think that was more a function of removing the peel itself rather than "must remove prickers".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:57 AM on July 20, 2018

This is very much about cucumber variety. There are many. The West India Gherkin variety, for instance, still has small spines. Many of the green, thick-skinned cukes in American supermarkets are descendants of the Straight 8, perfected in the 1930s specifically for grocery store transport and sales ("just what the Market wants").
posted by Miko at 11:47 AM on July 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yes, i agree with Miko it is a question of kind of cucumber. We grow our own both smooth ones and prickly ones.
I assume where you shop just offers smooth kinds.
I don't live in the US, so can only say that the chain food stores here in Austria mostly offer smooth variety but farmer's market s and health food stores offer also the prickly kind again since about 6 or 7 years since heirloom varieties became a thing. Before that it was only smooth ones for about 12 years or more unless you grew your own.
posted by 15L06 at 2:08 PM on July 20, 2018

The pickling cukes I have grown have vicious spikes. Also, the pickling cukes I have purchased at a store were spikey.
posted by Foam Pants at 10:43 PM on July 20, 2018