NEXT time you serve avocado, your guests might be surprised to learn that its name is derived from the Aztec description of the plant it grows on: the testicle tree.
How did the avocado get to be so called? The fruit originates from the forests of central America, and was originally the size of an olive. Avocados were cultivated to today’s large, oily, green magnificence by local people, including the Aztecs, who called them ahuacacuauhitl. This name, after some linguistic mangling by the Spanish, was written down as “avocado” by the British collector Sir Hans Sloan when he recorded…
