From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
A close relative of the peach, with a smooth skin and firm flesh. Nectarines are often erroneously thought to be a peach-plum cross or an especially cultivated fuzzless peach. In reality, the fruit was discovered growing wild in Asia more than 2,000 years ago. In 1819, the great English poet John Keats wrote to a friend, "Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand and with the other holding to my Mouth, a nectarine, good God how fine it went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy."
