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Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Tomato Tasting: Persimmon vs. Kellogg's Breakfast

I've been growing 'Kellogg's Breakfast' for several years and think it's one of the best tasting tomatoes there is. Until I tasted it, I believed that all yellow tomatoes were insipid compared to red. But I'd read glowing reviews of another large yellow tomato called 'Persimmon', most notably from MSS at Zanthan Gardens (1, 2, 3, 4), and last year decided to compare it to 'Kellogg's Breakfast'. As it turns out there are at least two different tomatoes called Persimmon and the one I grew last year may in fact have been 'Russian Persimmon'. I thought it was just OK in the flavor department, but the fruits were gorgeous to look at.

So this year I bought seeds of 'Persimmon' from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. The plants grew well at the beginning of the season, but during the cool, rainy early summer they started to develop some type of leaf spot disease. All 14 of my tomato varieties show the disease to some degree. I haven't tried very hard to diagnose the problem, but it may be bacterial speck. It begins as small brown spots and eventually kills the entire leaf. 'Persimmon' was one of the worst-affected plants and is now almost completely defoliated with just a few green leaves at the top. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' was infected later and has lost much foliage, but is still growing vigorously.

'Persimmon' set only 5 tomatoes, all approximately the same size. Of these, I picked three while semi-ripe and left two on the plant. Those two were chewed in half by some critter just as they were beginning to color up. So I've only got three to taste.

'Kellogg's Breakfast' has yielded 6 or 7 tomatoes so far, including one very large one, with more green fruit on the plant. Some of those are showing sunscald, however, due to the loss of the lower foliage from the leaf spot disease.

For the direct taste-off, I selected one fruit of each variety as nearly the same size and degree of ripeness as I could. 'Persimmon' is on the lower left and 'Kellogg's Breakfast' on the upper right.


You can see they are quite similar in appearance. 'Persimmon' is somewhat more ridged or scalloped. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' is rounder and a slightly deeper orange. I should note that it was also slightly less ripe than the 'Persimmon'. On the top side, both have cracks. 'Persimmon' (upper left) shows concentric cracking and 'Kellogg's Breakfast' radial cracking.


With the top sliced off, neither one of these particular specimens displays the irregular arrangement of seed chambers commonly seen in beefsteak tomatoes. It was more evident at the blossom end, but I didn't take a picture.


I wanted to be as fair as possible when comparing, and arranged a blind taste test with my spouse and myself as judges. In everyday life this is the only audience I have to please in the kitchen. I cut up the tomatoes into similar size pieces and placed them into identical bowls with a label on the bottom. It was easy to disguise the identities of the tomatoes from my spouse. He didn't see which tomato went into which bowl. The plan was for him to rearrange the bowls after I filled them, so that I wouldn't know which was which. No good. Having done the growing, the picking, and the processing, I could see the difference even though I tried to make the bowls appear the same. So, I put both bowls on a plate and rotated it round and round and round with my eyes closed.


With eyes still closed, I tasted the first one. Oh, that's 'Kellogg's Breakfast'. To my mind, it has a great balance of sweetness and tanginess delivered in a very meaty, mouth-filling bite. I tasted the next one. Similar in some ways, but much more tart. I perceived the taste as more "thin".

Well, that was Judge 1. What did Judge 2 think? He preferred 'Persimmon', saying it had a little more flavor. I couldn't get any greater specificity from him.

So, it looks like I'll be growing them both for some years to come. I'll be very interested to see how they compare in a year with more-typical weather. I feel that any judgments of any plants this year are bound to be distorted by the very unusually cool and wet early summer. It's lately turned warmer and drier, by the way.

And what became of the rest of those tomatoes? A delicious salad for dinner. Sliced tomatoes topped with 'Mexican Cinnamon Spice' and 'Sweet Petra Dark' basils, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and a drizzle of good olive oil.

Labels: tomatoes

posted by Entangled at 9:09 AM
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