Go from yuck to yum with the miracle berry.
About a year ago synsepalum dulcificum, known as the miracle fruit or miracle berry made some ripples in the food press.
In case you missed the story the first time around, these are berries that rewire your palate so that sour or bitter foods will taste sweet. Dark beer tastes like a chocolate milkshake, goat cheese turns into cake frosting, and ketchup tastes like maple syrup. Tequila goes down like apple juice, vinegar becomes wine, and wine tastes like a melted Popsicle.
What’s going on is that a protein in the miracle fruit binds with and alters the flavor of the acid in whatever foods you eat in combination with it. Low-acid foods like bananas and zucchini are unchanged. Vanilla is just vanilla. Tangy foods like onions and horseradish retain their astringent aroma but taste disorientingly bland, while worcestershire sauce will surprise you with its complexity.
The miracle fruit itself is pleasantly sweet and berry-like. It takes effect almost immediately and lasts for an hour or two. It took a first run at the American market in the 1970s. The fruit’s growers promoted its potential to sweeten foods with fewer calories than sugar and none of the health risks of artificial sweeteners. Its commercialization was abandoned when the FDA classified the fruit as an “additive” rather than a food. Recently interest has been revived by cutting-edge chefs and bartenders exploring its culinary potential and by food enthusiasts who make the fruit the centerpiece of experimental tasting parties.
Keep in mind that miracle berries change only the perception of taste, not the food’s chemistry. Your teeth, mouth, and digestive tract are as vulnerable as ever to the effects of highly acidic and spicy foods. If you want to experiment with a Tabasco-pickle juice-vermouth cocktail (and you know you will), just remember to follow it with a Tums chaser.
You can order miracle fruit online as fresh berries or as freeze-dried berry tablets.
Cut open a passion fruit and it’s a confusing mass of juicy, seedy pulp. It’s all edible, although you might want to strain out the seeds. Passion fruit is boldly tropical, and the sweetness and assertive flavor make it versatile in cooking and baking. There is a Passion of Christ/passion fruit connection that makes a whole lot of symbolic hooey, likening the vine’s tendrils to whips and its petals to the Apostles. Not Judas and Peter, though.
Yes, you are looking at a strawberry. The pineberry looks like strawberries and cream but smells and tastes just like pineapple. Tiny white berries with red pips, it’s a wild variety that was rescued from extinction, rechristened as the pineberry, and is now grown commercially.
I suggest that you find someone with a backyard pacay tree and make them your friend. Technically a legume, pacay pods don’t travel well, and you’ll only find frozen ones in the market; the fresh pods are worth the hunt. Crack open the hard shell and inside you’ll find a row of black seeds nestled in a bed of fluffy white flesh that tastes like vanilla ice cream with a hint of cotton candy.
Mangosteen is not at all mango-like. It’s sweet, tangy, and somewhat fibrous. Skip the astringent purple rind and go for the juicy white flesh around the seeds that comes apart in segments like a tangerine. It’s rarely baked into desserts, but fresh, uncooked mangosteen works well in sorbets and smoothies.
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