If you’ve ever wanted Tabasco to taste like doughnut glaze, stout ales to taste like chocolate milkshakes, or lemons and grapefruit to taste like candy, then your lucky day has arrived. A small berrylike fruit from Western Africa, now being grown in Florida, makes all of this taste reversal weirdness possible.
Magic fruit, also known as “miracle berry,” or Synsepalum dulcificum, has been known to the Western world since 1725. The cause of the taste reaction is a protein in the fruit called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds, functioning as a sweetness taste inducer when it comes into contact with acids. The reaction is temporary, lasting from 30 minutes to an hour or more, and intensity varies between individual fruits. Miraculin works its wonders through contact with the tongue, not from ingestion, and the effects are negated by hot foods. According to the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste, there are no dangers connected to consumption of the fruit.
Magic fruit is a small, football-shaped red berry about an inch long, with mildly sweet pulp surrounding a bitter seed. The process is to extract the pulp and use it to coat the tongue for 30 seconds or so. Once that is accomplished, your Willy Wonka-esque experience begins. On the East Coast, a recent culinary trend has been to host “flavor tripping” parties, where a group goes together and invests in the fruit and ingredients to taste a series of acid and bitter items. Foods that are already sweet taste cloyingly sweet, and good wine tastes like MD 20/20, so stick with acidic foods for the best effects.
To flavor-trip on your own, fruits can be ordered from Florida grower Curtis Mozie at www.miraclefruitman.com. A freezer pack of 30 berries costs about $120 with overnight shipping. Another source for frozen fruits, dried pulp tablets or granules, or even seeds is www.miraclefruitusa.com/products. To buy a plant for growing in an acid-based medium in a container, visit www.toptropicals.com.
This article appears in July 25 • 2008.
