Summer Fruit - Sugar Apples - Part Four

Aside from the small thin skinned yellow guavas that grow in the islands, my favorite fruit is the sugar apple. It too comes from the East Indies.

This rather ugly fruit holds within its knobby green skin a white meat with shiny black seeds. I have shown them here next to an orange to give you an idea of their size.

It is ripe when it is absolutely soft and mushy, and like its name implies, is wonderfully sweet, but not too sweet. Each knob is home to a seed that is surrounded by smooth textured meat. Between the skin and the base of seeds, which are loosely attached to the skin, there is a pasty sort of mush. It is kind of gritty, but has the same sweet flavor as the meat surrounding the seeds.

Here’s what a sugar apple looks like on the inside along with a few seeds. They just sort of fall apart when they are ripe.

I learned from my friend Vijaya that in India they are called sitafal, fruit of Sita. She was the wife of Rama, the epitome of wifely and womanly virtues, which might give you a clue as to the fruit's delicate and delectable flavor.

The tree they grow on is rather nondescript. It doesn’t get very big, perhaps 15 to 20 feet at the most and is rather rangy, with long spindly branches.

This is a young one about 3 years old grown from a seed. Maybe one day I will see it bear fruit.