Caimite

My in-laws arrived a week and a half ago, which has greatly disturbed my ability to post. But, they offer some new experiences.

For example, having visited an arboretum, they came home with a small bag of fruits. Included were a great number of guavas and tiny tangerines. There were two star fruits - lovely in form, but in general, not very tasty - and a strange new fruit.

The fruit is round and about the size of a baseball. It resembles a plum in several ways. It is a deep purple. The fruit has a smooth leathery skin, covering a soft flesh.

They had been instructed to cut the fruit in half and scoop out the insides to eat. (As one would a melon, they said. I don't actually eat my melons that way. So, perhaps more like an avocado...)

Once cut, the fruit startlingly resembles flesh. The deep red seems to bleed into the white flesh through tiny capillaries. It is as if one held a morsel of fish, freshly cut, in one's hand.

The fruit is soft and very sweet. I thought it tasted very similar to a loongan. I think my mother would love it, as it has not one single note of acidity.

Curious, I did a simple search on the web. It's called a star apple in English. Unfortunately, we had cut our fruit transversally. Had we cut it laterally, we would have seen the black seeds emanating from its core in its characteristic star formation.

I found this short passage in an English book published in 1830 about the Star Apple:

Star Apple—Chrysophyllum Cainilo.
This is also a native of the West Indies. It grows on a moderately-sized spreading tree, with slender, flexible branches. There are some species, or, at least, varieties of the fruit. The star apple, properly so called, bears fruit resembling a large apple, which, in the inside, is divided into ten cells, each containing a black seed, surrounded by a gelatinous pulp. The West Indian damson plum has small fruit, and is chiefly found in the woods. The milky juice of the star apple, both of the tree and the fruit, before it is ripe is remarkably astringent; but, when the fruit ripens, it is sweet and very agreeable to the taste (1).

Sometimes, I take myself to be an explorer in an unknown land.



(1) E. Lankester, C. Knight, and W. Clowes, A Description and History of Vegetable Substances Used in the Arts, and in Domestic Economy, ed. 2, 1830