On a recent Wednesday, she spent almost an hour at Andy’s Orchard — too much time, by her own admission — tasting and testing stone fruit with a portable Brix refractometer, which measures sugar levels in a few drops of juice. It’s the only objective measurement she relies on.

“It helps to communicate what I’m tasting,” she said. “All the chefs understand the Brix numbers, so it provides a baseline.”

She wasn’t looking for what most people think of as peak ripeness. She wanted fruit just shy of that point, when sugar levels are higher and it has the most flavor.

“It took me years before I realized what I was seeing: Tree-ripe fruit that’s firm tastes better than what is traditionally identified as ripe, when fruit is soft,” she said. “I think some consumers give up flavor to get juice running down their arms. But they don’t know what they are missing.” (She buys fruit that’s fairly firm, then lets it sit on the counter at home until it starts to yield. At that point it goes into the refrigerator so it won’t get soft.)