weird fruit

Related to the lychee and a native of tropical West Africa, ackee was imported to Jamaica in the 1700s and made a big impression; ackee and saltfish is Jamaicas national dish. Ackee pods ripen on the tree before picking, and to cook the fruit, people remove the soft, spongy whiteyellow flesh before boiling it. The oils contain many important nutrients like fatty acids, although the unripened parts of the fruit have been known to cause food poisoning. Canned ackee has been restricted in the U.S. at various times for safety reasons, but it currently has the FDAs seal of approval.

This fruit is also known as urucu, its Tupi Indian name, and can be found in the tropical parts of the Americas as well as Southeast Asia. The fruit is red and spiny brown after it hardens and contains bright red seeds. Unlike the other fruit included in this list, achiotes fruit is inedible, so we cant speak to its flavor. Instead, its bright red seeds come in handy in annatto coloring, which you may have seen on packages for everything from lipstick to cheddar cheese. In addition to being used for food coloring, achiote seeds can also be used to create a flavor and scent, like a peppery nutmeg.

Fruit doesnt get stranger than these West African berries, which contain the molecule miraculin and make everything taste sweet. Youll notice the impact most with sour foods raw lemons suddenly taste like lemondrop candies and the effect lasts about 30 to 90 minutes. The berries themselves are not very fleshy or tasty in their own right. Eating the berry involves scraping the flesh off around a seed in the middle, then swirling the pulp around in your mouth for about a minute so the miraculin has a chance to bind onto your taste buds. If you decide to arrange a flavor tripping party, experiment to see how a range of flavors taste under the influence say, pickles, mustard, citrus fruits, cheeses, even a Guinness beer.

This fruit is part of both the cucumber and the melon families. While native to Africa, the horned melon is now grown in California, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand and nicknamed blowfish in the southeastern U.S. The fruit immediately stands out for the horns on its orange exterior; the inside is equally strange green, with white seeds. It tastes a lot like a cucumber crossed with a zucchini and while some people eat the seeds and the skin, its more common to eat just the pulp and spit out the seeds.

A member of the nightshade family of plants, physalis resembles a tomato in many ways: size, structure, shape. The strange differentiating factor is that physalis is found inside papery husks that look like tissue paper or dried leaves. As for taste, physalis fruit are generally mild with summery acidity, not unlike a strawberry or a cross between a tomato and a pineapple. Physalis is easy to grow thriving even in poor soil or a pot and a commercially cultivated version is the tomatillo, generally small, green, and encased by a thin papery husk.

Mammee Apple, Mamey Apple or Santo Domingo Apricot is an evergreen tree, native to South America, which was introduced to various other regions of the world including West Africa and South East Asia. They can also be found in Florida and Hawaii. The Mammee apple is actually a berry and gets up to 20 cm in diameter. It has a thick outer rind, with soft orange to yellow pulp on the inside. It usually had one seed in the centre, but larger fruit have been known to carry up to 4. The pulp is sweet and fragrant.

Cherymoya, or custard apple, is a deciduous plant found in the high lying mountainous areas of South America. The fruit is vaguely round and is found with 3 types of skin Impressa (indented), Tuberculate (covered in nodules) or intermediate (a combination of the first two). The flesh inside the skin is very fragrant, white, juicy and has a custard like consistency. It is said that the fruit tastes like a combination of banana, passion fruit, papaya and pineapple. Mark Twain said in 1866 the most delicious fruit known to men, cherimoya

Platonia or Bacuri is a large tree (reaching 40m) found in the rain forests of Brazil and Paraguay. The fruit become the size of a orange, and have a thick yellow peel which oozes a yellow latex when pressed. Inside there is a sticky white pulp, wrapped around several black seeds, which tastes pleasant and has a sweet and sour flavor.

Cocona fruit is another tropical fruit found in the mountainous regions of South America. It grows on a small shrub, and can miraculously grow from seed to fruit in less than 9 months, after which the fruit will take another 2 months to ripen. The fruit is a berry and comes in red, orange or yellow. It has a similar appearance to tomatoes, and is said to taste like a mixture between tomatoes and lemons.

Breadfruit is a large tree, in the mulberry family, found native to the Philippines and all the islands in Southeast Asia. The fruit is similar to bananas, as they can be eaten raw when ripe, and cooked when unripe. The ripe fruit is soft and sweet, while the unripe fruit is harder and starchy, which is where it got the name breadfruit from, as it tastes similar to freshly baked bread when cooked.