Berry Berry Weird

Question: Who takes a pint of Guinness, plunks in a scoop of lemon sorbet, belts it back, and rhapsodically calls it a “chocolate shake?”

Answer: The guy sitting next to the girl who’s shaking Tabasco straight from the bottle onto her tongue and insisting it tastes like “hot donut glaze.”

Welcome to the newest game of culinary one-upsmanship, the “flavor tripping party.”

The star of the party is miracle fruit (aka Synsepalum dulcificum), a small red, berry-like fruit that contains a molecule called miraculin that binds to the tongue’s taste buds, causing bitter and sour flavors consumed after eating it to taste sweet.

That means goat cheese tastes like sugared cheesecake, limes like candy, vinegar tastes like apple juice, and pricey Bordeaux wines like Manischewitz.

According to a recent article in The New York Times and a not-so-recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the unassuming fruit (which looks a lot like a cranberry and is said to have a mildly sweet tang) is a native of West Africa. Researchers have known about its “miraculous” properties since the 1700s, but it’s only been in the last year or so that bored foodies latched onto it as a natural follow-up to Pop Rocks.

The Times article chronicles a “flavor tripping party” in Queens (NY) last week, where host Franz Aliquo handed each guest a single berry and led them to a table laden with citrus wedges, mustards, Brussels sprouts, dark beers, pickles and cheap tequila that he promised would taste like top-shelf Patron after they chewed on the berry for one minute.

“Not mind-blowing, but very, very cool” is the way blogster Jacob Grier described the experience when he attended a similar party a year ago.

But miracle fruit isn’t just a culinary curiosity. There’s also a cloak-and-dagger aspect to the story. That’s because in the 1970s some clever entrepreneurs sought to isolate an extract of miraculin that could be sold as a sugar substitute. The FDA squashed the efforts. Entrepreneurs cried foul, claiming the FDA was in bed with the sugar industry, which clearly doesn’t want any competition from upstart berries.

You can find plenty about that nasty row on line. I’d give you a bunch of links to stories here but I'm busy chasing down a local source for the fresh berries.  Failing that, I guess I’ll turn to the on-line seller MiracleFruitMan.com, where you can buy seeds to grow your own miracle fruit ($1 a seed, plus shipping and handling) or a package of 30 highly-perishable berries shipped overnight for 90 bucks (S&H included).

Yes, that’s ridiculously expensive. And yes, that’s one helluva lot of weird berries in the fridge. But something tells me that sitting around by yourself playing with miracle fruit isn’t nearly as much fun as chomping them with 29 crazy friends.

Comments

[Cyber Rainbow]

hope they can use this to replace sugar