I want to know if my cucumber or ridge gourd is bitter before cooking, but for some reason, I can't eat or smell a slice of it to check. Is there any other way to check its bitterness?
(I'm hoping that there will be another way, for how else would factories that produce bulk food products use cucumbers or ridge gourds unless they have an army of workers whose job is to eat slices of each cucumber :-))
Best Answer
No, there is no other way. You have to taste it. Smell is a second best, but not as reliable, and almost unusable on a whole cucumber.
In recent years, there has been some quite good research on automated sensors for the detection of flavors or specified substances, and they can probably do it too. But beside all the obvious drawbacks, they are not magical, and they also need a slice of the cucumber to "test".
As mentioned in other answers and comments, companies don't have a way to escape that either, they use produce that is grown to be non-bitter (very interesting information from ChrisH how this happens for cucumbers) and they also have people whose job is to taste-test.