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ATOMCan You Identify This Mystery Fruit?
We encountered this fruit, or maybe it is a vegetable, in the Farmer’s Market in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawai’i.
We asked if it could be eaten raw, and the lady who sold it said, as best I can recall, “Wugubbi wiki neepo chi wajubi.” I took that to mean “yes.” However, a test revealed a vegetable taste suggesting milkweed mixed with alum. I last tasted milkweed when I was six, but the intensely bitter flavor is not something you forget.
The fruit is about 2.5 inches (11 cm) in diameter and has large shiny black seeds. The seeds look similar to a cherimoya , but the skin is quite different, and flesh is yellow-orange.
I tried searching the web to no avail. So if you can identify it, please let me know. I am hoping it is edible with some preparation. That would be be better than, say, to discover that it’s a traditional cure for dandruff.
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October 24, 2008
The mystery fruit is a canistel, also known as an egg fruit! The fruit takes up to ten days to ripen, and is then soft and sweet. It is eaten without being cooked. Clearly, my problem was that the fruit was not ripe. It’s called an egg fruit because when ripe the flesh has the color and consistency of the yolk of a hard-boiled egg.
I discovered the identity of the mystery fruit from a poster showing about a hundred tropical fruits. The poster was on sale in the gift shop in Volcano House, the hotel in Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island. I bought a copy of the poster for future reference. There is potential for 99 more blogs posts.
Comment
Gravlax Unusual Ingredients of 1995
It’s a quince
— SARAH · Sep 26, 12:13 AM · #
I don’t think it is a quince because (1) quince have a characteristic lumpy shape and are round on top, not pointy like whatever this is, and (2) quince do not grow in the tropics and this was encountered at a farmer’s market in Hawaii. See http://desperatelyseekingcrab.com/2008/04/23/quince/
It does have some similarities, however.
-Roy
— · Oct 3, 02:35 AM · #