Eggplant in the context of "Berry (botany)"

A berry is a small, pulpy, and often edible fruit. Typically, berries are juicy, rounded, brightly colored, sweet, sour or tart, and do not have a stone or pit although many pips or seeds may be present.‍ Common examples of berries in the culinary sense are strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, white currants, blackcurrants, and redcurrants.‍ In Britain, soft fruit is a horticultural term for such fruits.‍

The common usage of the term "berry" is different from the scientific or botanical definition of a berry, which refers to a fleshy fruit produced from the ovary of a single flower where the outer layer of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion (pericarp). The botanical definition includes many fruits that are not commonly known or referred to as berries,‍ such as grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, bananas, and chili peppers. Fruits commonly considered berries but excluded by the botanical definition include strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, which are aggregate fruits, and mulberries, which are multiple fruits. Watermelons and pumpkins are giant berries that fall into the category "pepos". A plant bearing berries is said to be bacciferous or baccate.

Pasta alla Norma (Italian: [ˈpasta alla ˈnɔrma]), also called pasta con le melanzane (lit. 'pasta with eggplant'), is a pasta dish made from eggplant. It is typical of Sicilian cuisine, from Catania in particular.

It is made of penne or other pasta with tomato sauce, covered with slices of fried eggplant and served with grated ricotta salata cheese and often basil.

Asterids are a large clade (monophyletic group) of flowering plants, composed of 17 orders and more than 80,000 species, about a third of the total flowering plant species. The asterids are divided into the unranked clades lamiids (8 orders) and campanulids (7 orders), and the single orders Cornales and Ericales. Well-known asterids include dogwoods and hydrangeas (order Cornales), tea, blueberries, cranberries, kiwifruit, Brazil nuts, argan, sapote, and azaleas (order Ericales), sunflowers, lettuce, common daisy, yacon, carrots, celery, parsley, parsnips, ginseng, ivies, holly, honeysuckle, elder, and valerian (clade campanulids), borage, forget-me-nots, comfrey, coffee, frangipani, gentian, pong-pong, oleander, periwinkle, basil, mint, rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, wild dagga, olives, ash, teak, foxgloves, lilac, jasmine, snapdragons, African violets, butterfly bushes, sesame, psyllium, potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, chilli peppers, tobacco, petunias, morning glory, and sweet potato (clade lamiids).

Most of the taxa belonging to this clade had been referred to as Asteridae in the Cronquist system (1981) and as Sympetalae in earlier systems. The name asterids (not necessarily capitalised) resembles the earlier botanical name but is intended to be the name of a clade rather than a formal ranked name, in the sense of the ICBN.

Solanaceae (/ˌsɒləˈneɪsi.iː, -ˌaɪ/), commonly known as the nightshades, is a family of flowering plants in the order Solanales. The family contains approximately 2,700 species, several of which are used as agricultural crops, medicinal plants, and ornamental plants. Many members of the family have high alkaloid contents, making some highly toxic, but many—such as tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers—are commonly used in food.

Originating in South America, Solanaceae now inhabit every continent on Earth except Antarctica. After the K–Pg extinction event they rapidly diversified and have adapted to live in deserts, tundras, rainforests, plains, and highlands, and taken on wide range of forms including trees, vines, shrubs, and epiphytes. Nearly 80% of all nightshades are included in the subfamily Solanoideae, most of which are members of the type genus Solanum. Most taxonomists recognize six other subfamilies: Cestroideae, Goetzeoideae, Nicotianoideae, Petunioideae, Schizanthoideae, and Schwenkioideae, although nightshade taxonomy is still controversial. The genus Duckeodendron is sometimes placed in its own subfamily, Duckeodendroideae.

Solanum is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, which include three food crops of high economic importance: the potato, the tomato and the eggplant (aubergine, brinjal). It is the largest genus in the nightshade family Solanaceae, comprising around 1,500 species. It also contains the so-called horse nettles (unrelated to the genus of true nettles, Urtica), as well as numerous plants cultivated for their ornamental flowers and fruit.

Solanum species show a wide range of growth habits, such as annuals and perennials, vines, subshrubs, shrubs, and small trees. Many formerly independent genera like Lycopersicon (the tomatoes) and Cyphomandra are now included in Solanum as subgenera or sections. Thus, the genus today contains roughly 1,500–2,000 species.

The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several subregions, including the cuisines of Southeastern Native American tribes, Tidewater, Appalachian, Ozarks, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, African American cuisine and Floribbean, Spanish, French, British, Ulster-Scots, German, Italian and Middle Eastern cuisine. Elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts of the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.

Many elements of Southern cooking—tomatoes, squash, corn (and its derivatives, such as hominy and grits), and deep-pit barbecuing—are borrowings from Indigenous peoples of the region (e.g., Cherokee, Caddo, Choctaw, and Seminole). From the Old World, European colonists introduced sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and livestock, along with a number of vegetables; meanwhile, enslaved West Africans trafficked to the North American colonies through the Atlantic slave trade introduced black-eyed peas, okra, eggplant, sesame, sorghum, melons, and various spices. Rice also became prominent in many dishes in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina because the enslaved people who settled the region (now known as the Gullah people) were already quite familiar with the crop.