Most of us know that vegetable manipulation, especially breaking and crushing them, is a frequent tactic in foley and general sound effects recording for simulating the sound of certain other things being destroyed like bones, chest cavities, and craniums.
But why do some vegetables and fruits have this particular talent?

It’s mostly not their wetness. Strawberries are among the wettest of fruits but kinda suck at producing interesting sounds.

It’s mostly not that they are alive. A carrot snapped in two is pretty boring.

But let’s look at one of the superstars of vegetable manipulation: the bell pepper.

A simulated bell pepper made of Styrofoam, definitely never alive … but hollow, with a thin but relatively rigid outer shell, would make a very similar sound to an actual pepper when cracked open, though admittedly a bit of wetness would add a useful layer.

The magic comes from the combination of a rigid layer encasing a hollow or at least soft interior. The internal resonance that happens when the rigid layer is cracked is a big part of the appeal, and the sonically delicious icing on the cake is that the resonant frequency changes dynamically as the shape of the cavity changes in the course of the destruction.

Another factor that favors these kinds of vegetables over a carrot, for example, is duration. A snap of only a few milliseconds in length, what you get when you break a carrot, is almost never going to be as interesting as a more elongated rip or tear that lasts more like a second.

That’s why peppers (the bigger and more hollow the better), and celery, and cabbage, and watermelons are among the most musically gruesome of veggies.

And why they’re so good at simulating and creatively exaggerating the fracturing sound of other objects with hard shells and soft insides, like bones and craniums.

Hollow things in general tend to make sounds interesting to humans, which is why so many musical instruments are comprised of at least one hollow component.