The Daily OrangeMagic summer fruit sweets palate, brings new flavors
By Talie Tebbi
Posted: 4/28/09, 6:49 AM EST Section: Feature
Lemons, grapefruit, orange juice, Sour Patch Kids and beer. If you think the spread for this party is unusual, get a load of the main dish: a round, red berry with an almost unbearable taste. It's tiny, it's rare, and it's miraculous.
Synsepalum dulcificum - "miracle berries," or "miracle fruit" - have the ability to turn sour foods sweet. And they make for a great theme party often referred to as "foodtripping".
Miracle fruit are tough little berries that grow naturally in West Africa, and they are available through several Web sites. The berry isn't sweet itself, but for more than an hour after you pop one of them, every sour thing you eat tastes sweet. So if you're looking for an unorthodox summer party idea, miracle fruit might be a good place to start. Just get all your friends to bring something to taste -Tabasco sauce, citrus fruit, sour candies.
Not all foods work. The key is to find foods high in acid. According to a study by G.E. Inglett, miraculin, a protein in the berry, coats the surfaces of the mouth and plays with your taste buds so that they interpret acidic tastes as sweet flavors.
So have each guest pop one, break the skin and swish the soft inside around all the surfaces of the mouth. Crunch up the seed and keep swishing. Have extras on hand, but be warned: The berries don't come cheap.
Miracle fruit generally go for about $2 to $3 a berry, and you won't find them in Syracuse. Workers in Wegmans' produce department said they hadn't even heard of the berry, nor had their counterparts in local specialty shops. But you can order them online at sites such as TheMiracleFruitMan.com.
Miracle fruit is both rare and pricey because it doesn't grow naturally in cold climates. Once picked, the miraculin decreases. In fact, miracle fruit only last for a few days after harvesting. But now companies are finding ways around that. Miraculin comes in tablet and powder form. And while the Food and Drug Administration refused to recognize it as an alternative sweetener, it does help West Africans stomach some of their less-flavorful foods, and researchers are trying to find other practical uses for the product.
So if you're not a fan of orange juice, take a shot with a miracle fruit. Your taste buds think it's super sweet orange candy. Beer tastes sweet, like it would without the hops. Lemons taste sugar-coated, and Hershey's bars are surprisingly disgusting. The miraculin shouldn't have an effect on chocolate, but for some reason (maybe just the strange combinations of food) the classic candy bar lost its warm, sugary appeal.
But the good news is that as far as the FDA knows, miracle fruit is perfectly safe and has no long-term effects.
The short-term effects typically last a few hours, but after a while, all the sweetness might overwhelm the palate, so keep a few salty snacks (tortilla chips work) on hand to give your taste buds a break.
nstebbi@syr.edu
Synsepalum dulcificum - "miracle berries," or "miracle fruit" - have the ability to turn sour foods sweet. And they make for a great theme party often referred to as "foodtripping".
Miracle fruit are tough little berries that grow naturally in West Africa, and they are available through several Web sites. The berry isn't sweet itself, but for more than an hour after you pop one of them, every sour thing you eat tastes sweet. So if you're looking for an unorthodox summer party idea, miracle fruit might be a good place to start. Just get all your friends to bring something to taste -Tabasco sauce, citrus fruit, sour candies.
Not all foods work. The key is to find foods high in acid. According to a study by G.E. Inglett, miraculin, a protein in the berry, coats the surfaces of the mouth and plays with your taste buds so that they interpret acidic tastes as sweet flavors.
So have each guest pop one, break the skin and swish the soft inside around all the surfaces of the mouth. Crunch up the seed and keep swishing. Have extras on hand, but be warned: The berries don't come cheap.
Miracle fruit generally go for about $2 to $3 a berry, and you won't find them in Syracuse. Workers in Wegmans' produce department said they hadn't even heard of the berry, nor had their counterparts in local specialty shops. But you can order them online at sites such as TheMiracleFruitMan.com.
Miracle fruit is both rare and pricey because it doesn't grow naturally in cold climates. Once picked, the miraculin decreases. In fact, miracle fruit only last for a few days after harvesting. But now companies are finding ways around that. Miraculin comes in tablet and powder form. And while the Food and Drug Administration refused to recognize it as an alternative sweetener, it does help West Africans stomach some of their less-flavorful foods, and researchers are trying to find other practical uses for the product.
So if you're not a fan of orange juice, take a shot with a miracle fruit. Your taste buds think it's super sweet orange candy. Beer tastes sweet, like it would without the hops. Lemons taste sugar-coated, and Hershey's bars are surprisingly disgusting. The miraculin shouldn't have an effect on chocolate, but for some reason (maybe just the strange combinations of food) the classic candy bar lost its warm, sugary appeal.
But the good news is that as far as the FDA knows, miracle fruit is perfectly safe and has no long-term effects.
The short-term effects typically last a few hours, but after a while, all the sweetness might overwhelm the palate, so keep a few salty snacks (tortilla chips work) on hand to give your taste buds a break.
nstebbi@syr.edu
Be the first to comment on this story