This blog post is devoted to answering a question I've had for a few years…when did tangerines, one of my favorite snacks, suddenly become clementines? I found this answer on Yahoo Answers:
Clementines, tangerines and satsumas are all types of mandarin. Mandarins have been cultivated in China for a couple of thousand years, where they were deemed a fruit only suitable for the upper echelons of society and so were only exported to Europe in the 1900's. Of the various types of mandarin, clementines are smaller and tend to have fewer seeds, a very thin easily peeled skin. They are seemingly named after one Father Pierre Clement who, the story goes, inadvertently bred the hybrid orange in his orphanage garden in Oman. Tangerines, with loose skin and less sweetness, where named after their original port of origin in Tangiers, in fact, the word tangerine was already in common parlance before then as an adjective describing something from Tangiers. Satsuma's are just that. Satsumas from Satsuma, the Japanese province in which they were first cultivated, though, confusingly they are sometimes called mikans.
The main difference between a clementine and a tangerine is that a clementine is seedless while a tangerine is not. That likely explains the rising popularity of clementines.
I love these guys! Forget the 100 calorie cookie packs, these fruits are the very first calorie-controlled pre-measured snack. They're high in vitamin C, which is an antioxidant as well as a vitamin. And they're not shabby when it comes to folate.
If you're feeling creative, I found a fun web page with recipes using clementines.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Clementine-Recipes:-Not-Just-for-Snacking&id=107724
