Fruity Confusion

Emily gave me a half dozen pawpaws last week. The largest edible fruit indigenous to the US, these particular pawpaws came from a friend of Emily's property. Her friend also sells them to several restaurants, where the chefs prize the fruit for their provenance as well as their seasonality-- pawpaws do not keep or travel well, so they are not commercially produced. "Most restaurants make ice cream with them," Emily told me.

We cut one open and scooped the custardy flesh from the thin peel with a spoon. "It tastes like nothing," Josh declared of the vaguely sweet mush on his spoon. Heidi agreed. I admired the large black shiny seeds. They were substantial, like a chunky organic bead. 

"Maybe they're not ripe yet," I suggested and put the rest of the pawpaws on the window sill, where they sat until this morning when I blended them up with some eggs and cream, half a roasted sweet potato (for body) and a sprinkle of cinnamon. At the last minute I added a dash of apple cider vinegar for tartness and cooked it into a smooth custard.

I knew my ice cream would need some contrasting texture, so I chopped up some chocolate covered nut crunch with cashews, almonds, and pecans and threw it all in the ice cream maker. 45 minutes later I had a silky, golden-hued frozen dessert with lovely chunks of candied nuts and chocolate. Ahhh, but how did it taste? you wonder. 

Many people who enjoy pawpaws disagree about their flavor. Is it bananalike? Mangoish? Melony? As quoted by Wikipedia, Ohio botanist William B. Werthner noted that The fruit ... has a tangy wild-wood flavor peculiarly its own. It is sweet, yet rather cloying to the taste and a wee bit puckery – only a boy can eat more than one at a time.

That's close, but not quite right. Tonight, when I served the ice cream for dessert, we discussed the flavor at length.

"It just tastes so weird," Heidi frowned. "It's hard to say what it taste like, because it doesn't taste exactly like anything else."

"It starts out caramelly and then takes a turn toward the not quite unpleasant and finishes with an unidentifiable fruitiness," Josh said, moving his finger in a roller coaster motion. "But I like it. Kind of. I'll probably eat more. Maybe a lot more. Maybe not."