On a date, beautiful skin can change the grade. The FAO handbook on date palm cultivation describes the skin of two varieties, Medjool and Barhee, in detail and treats some skin flaws as grading faults even when the fruit tastes fine. This piece is about that fruit skin: how it looks on those two varieties, which flaws count, and what the varieties sold in Malaysia look like. It says nothing about creams, or about what dates might do for a person's complexion.
The Medjool skin up close
The FAO traces Medjool to the Tafilalet area of Morocco and calls it a very large date, 20 to 40 grams, covered with a waxy structure. Its skin is irregularly wrinkled, shiny at the peak and dull lower down. It is medium thick and tender, tied to the flesh, and it shrinks at the tamar stage.
Colour changes as the fruit ripens. A Medjool is yellow-orange with dark red stripes at the khalal stage, amber at rutab and a transparent dark brown to black at tamar. The handbook adds that the final colour depends on climate and growing conditions.
Loose skin is a looks problem
The FAO lists two defects typical of Medjool, and both are about appearance. The first is loose skin. As the flesh loses water, on the palm and after picking, the skin tends to lift away from it. The handbook blames mainly growing and habitat conditions and says natural or artificial drying changes little. In its words, loose skin is "an aesthetic defect rather than a taste defect", and fruit with more than 20 to 25% loose skin is graded Class II.
The second defect is sugar crystals. Where loose skin has broken, crystals of sugar form on the flesh and under the skin. It happens more in fruit that had a high moisture content at harvest, and it also drops the fruit to Class II.
That Class II belongs to the FAO's description. It is not the same thing as the A, AA, AAA or Jumbo grades printed on Malaysian packs, which are each importer's own size sorting.
Barhee, a skin that lets go
Barhee, which the FAO traces to Basra in Iraq, behaves differently. At rutab its flesh becomes very soft and separates easily from the skin, and at tamar the skin comes away completely except around the calyx, turning greyish yellow. Barhee is also more prone to checking and splitting than other varieties, mostly as lengthwise lines running from the middle to the tip. In Iraq and Israel it is marketed fresh on the strand at the khalal stage.
Wrinkles come with full ripeness
Most varieties are different from Barhee here. At tamar the FAO describes the skin as staying attached to the flesh and wrinkling as the flesh shrinks, while skin and flesh both darken over time. On a fully ripe date, then, wrinkles are simply what ripening on the palm produces.
Date skins you will see in Malaysia
Malaysia has no commercial date-growing trade, so every seller here works with imported fruit, from this site to suppliers such as Supplier Kurma Green diamond. The skins vary a great deal by variety.
Ajwa from Madinah is small, roundish and near-black with finely wrinkled skin. Piarom from Iran is dark and semi-dry with a thin skin. Sukari from Al-Qassim in Saudi Arabia is golden-amber and is sold either soft, as rutab, or drier. Deglet Noor from Tunisia and Algeria is golden and translucent, and when it comes on the stem it is sold as kurma tangkai. A name with Madinah in it points to a region, since Ajwa, Safawi and Mabroom all come from the Madinah area (see Kurma Madinah Green diamond).
Asking about a variety
According to its About Us page, Date Fruit Exporter serves both retail and wholesale buyers and delivers throughout Malaysia. The About Us page also invites readers to ask for a quote, and the Contact Us page gives a WhatsApp number. The blog collects the site's other date articles.