'Ripen at home' fruit

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I don’t know whether this is a general ‘thing’ or just a British phenomenon, but for some years now supermarkets here have been selling fruit labelled as ‘ripen at home’. In other words unripe. Of course it’s better for the retailers because unripe fruit is hard and easier to transport, it isn’t soft and squashy so it doesn’t get damaged, and it doesn’t go past its best so quickly because it hasn’t reached its best yet. But in my experience it never does actually ripen at home, it just goes straight from hard and unripe to soft and rotten. I generally avoid buying any of these fruits nowadays, they’re always such a disappointment. My partner tends to buy them more often because he actually likes fruit like plums and nectarines when they’re crunchy, something I just can’t understand. I would rather never eat a plum again than have to gnaw through one of those hard round things like a golf ball! Anyway the other day we fell into the trap and bought a punnet of ‘ripen at home’ flat peaches because it was a special offer. Why do we never learn? They started off hard then started to go rotten and mouldy. The solution in these cases is to cook the fruit. That is the only way to transform these hard things into something edible. I stoned the peaches, replaced the stones with a knob of marzipan and voila! a delicious dessert. All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2026.