Plant cuticular materials comprise a fundamental source of aliphatic moieties in SOM. The aliphatic portion of a plant cuticle includes the biopolymers, cutin and cutan. The literature has demonstrated that these biopolymers exhibit selective preservation in soils, and therefore may contribute to long-term soil activities, such as organic contaminant sorption. To better understand the structural characteristics of this portion of SOM, the aliphatic components of three fruit cuticles, from crops characteristic of the northeastern US, were analyzed using ¹³C NMR, ATR, DSC and elemental analysis. Cuticles were isolated from tomato, pepper and apple fruits by manual peeling. The cuticles were then subjected to a series of chemical treatments to remove selected polymers. Bulk cuticles were dewaxed in a soxhlet extraction with methanol and chloroform, to isolate the cutin polymer. The cutin was then depolymerized by saponification with KOH in methanol. Finally, the cuticles were acid hydrolyzed with 6M HCl to remove polysaccharides, and isolate cutan. Results from characterization using ¹³C NMR and ATR indicate that the plant cuticles of all three plants are comprised of extractable lipids, polysaccharides, and cutin, while the apple and pepper fruit also contained a lignin-like fraction, cutan. The aliphatic peak signatures of the apple cutan were much weaker than the pepper sample's. H/C and (O+N)/C ratios for the cuticle fractions isolated indicate that the bulk cuticle, dewaxed cuticle and lipid fractions of each fruit are more aliphatic, but have a similar polarity, to their respective cutan fraction. The results of this investigation indicate that, due to their high aliphaticity, and slow decomposition, the cutin and cutan fraction of plant cuticular material may be an integral component in the sorption of hydrophobic organic contaminants in soils.