What do strawberries taste like?

Some are sweet, and some are tart. I didn't know that some people had a different reaction to the same batch of berries.

There might be two phenomena going on. One is that individual perceptions are relative ... as senses like taste or smell can differ from one person to another. What one person prefers or senses as tasting sweet can be different than what you sense as sweet.

How does one person accurately describe the taste of something to another person? Wine lovers often read wine writers who wax on with absurd descriptions (using adjective like flinty, grassy...etc.) of taste experiences ... loaded with vagueness. But to relate the experience you'll have is nearly impossible. There's really no way to be sure two people have the same experience with their senses. So your sister might taste the exact same strawberry as you as being sweet but you sense or PREFER something a bit different.

The other is the variance in strawberries themselves. Less ripe strawberries are a bit tart and ripe ones are sweeter. But your preference or aversion to any tartness might be skewing your reaction to the taste.

I've tasted both sweet and tart strawberries, but my wife and I always agree one over the other when we eat from the same basket. I believe it's also seasonal when tartness is early harvest, and sweeter as the weather gets warmer.

Some are bred that way, too. Big red things the size of your fist, and nothing but vaguely sweet mush on the inside. Wild strawberries are great, but so small and sparcely distributed they aren't worth the trouble of picking.

Still, it's fascinating that two people would have such differences in perception of the same batch of supposedly identical berries.

I've also tasted huge strawberries that didn't have much taste to them.

They usually dip them in chocolate and sell them in places like Disneyland. They don't worry much about repeat customers.

And charge a small fortune for them too!

Even though some strawberries are much sweeter than others, even the sweetest ones I find a bit tart as well and if I don't add sugar to them, I will mix them with something like yogurt or ice cream. In the summer during the strawberry season, I'm good for throwing some in a blender with ice cream and milk... Yummmmm...

I do that often; mix my cut up strawberries in ice cream, and I like to squoosh them before eating it.

What I'll call canned whipped cream softenes up the tartness real well, too. And there's so much air blown into it, it doesn't add much to the calories.

Air? LOL You do know how to deceive yourself!
Well, actually it depends on the amount.

I do the same sometimes, good stuff whipped cream is good too Roger

Okay okay. It's really nitrous oxide. It makes really small bubbles.

Lol, "tiny bubbles"

Wild strawberries are the best. So sweet, sparse, sometimes but then you'll find a patch and you'll pick pounds of them before you know it.

I agree and the same with wild blueberries. We have several patches along the woods next to our house and I've never had better blueberries.

My experience tends to focus on the word 'sparse'.

There are places in the rockies that give reason to bears being fat. Perhaps the wild strawberries of the mountainous areas get more rain than the texan varieties.

The last ones I ran across were in the San Juans of SW Colorado. Pretty good rainfall there, too. Now that you mention it, I did see a single, but very distinct bear track not too far from there. If I were still backpacking, I would make a note not to set up camp in a strawberry patch.

San Juans and the Sangre de Cristos are the two southern spurs of the Rockies, by the way.