Fruit

Stone fruit

Three to five minutes cut side down, and the shortest fruit time in the chart.

What it does in fast-moving hot air

Stone fruit is high in sugar and acid with a soft, high-water flesh held together by a skin that goes slack early. The cut face caramelises within a couple of minutes because the sugar is right there at the surface, and past about five minutes the flesh behind it collapses and the half loses its shape. It is the clearest case in the fruit chart of a cook that is entirely about the surface: the inside is barely warmed and is not meant to be.

Why the cut matters

Peaches, plums and nectarines are treated as one food because the published guidance treats them as one — halved, stoned, pressed onto the plate, three to five minutes — and because the cooking problem genuinely is identical across them.

Cooking pages

Grilled peaches and plums — Three to five minutes cut side down — the shortest fruit row there is.

There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.