Strange Fruit, Part 5

Now most people don’t skip a step when you mention passion fruit (well, it’s not exactly on the level of apples and oranges in America, but it’s also not in the land of abiu and other sapotes ... but that’s a topic for another day...). But toss granadilla their way and you might get that subtly startled “gesundheit” look.

Granadilla is, in fact, a relative of the more-common passion fruit, and two types are most common: giant and sweet granadilla (visit the Emerald City—uh, I mean Wikipedia—to hear the great and terrible Oz briefly speak on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_granadilla and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_granadilla). I think the sweet version holds more commercial interest, which is probably why the New Crop resource database at Purdue University has a listing for it (see http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/sweet_granadilla.html).

To step even further into the Enchanted Forest, consider the obscure—perhaps commercially emergent?—guavadilla, a cross between guava and granadilla. (How obscure is it, you ask? A quick Google of the fruit yielded 90 hits—a good handful from South Africa and another chunk about a horse of the same name...) This hybrid is just starting to pop up as a flavor, and I sampled a beverage highlighting it the other day at the IFT “Chicago” Supplier’s “Night” at the Robertet Flavors booth.

The Robertet rep I briefly chatted with noted that the fruit came from South America, so I bet the hybrid crosses guava with the sweet granadilla, a native of the Andes. The sweet granadilla has, reportedly, quite an acidic bite (if it doesn’t have a pleasant flavor, it must be good for you—and the fruit does contain vitamins A, C and K, as well as phosphorus, iron and calcium). It is also supposed to have a rather aromatic quality—which came through in the Robertet sample. That olfactory interest is a nice trait—particularly in beverages. (With the renewed rise in interest in using aroma to sell at the retail level—it has to come up every few years or so (see http://www.foodproductdesign.com/blogs/doug/blogdefault.aspx?a=67h2414319.html&m=art for a bit of info)—perhaps manufacturers could imbue the beverage’s label with the scent to lure unsuspecting noses in the supermarket aisle. A better idea I’ve seen batted around of late is infusing the cap with the aroma somehow so that the consumer gets a quick blast of the scent upon opening the bottle.)

Which fruits will make a splash or fizzle into drips depends on a number of factors, but sometimes you can tell the difference with just a little sip.