A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue

[Brownian Motion]

The New York Times

May 28, 2008

A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue

By PATRICK FARRELL and KASSIE BRACKEN

CARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.”

Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!”

They were among 40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.

The host was Franz Aliquo, 32, a lawyer who styles himself Supreme Commander (Supreme for short) when he’s presiding over what he calls “flavor tripping parties.” Mr. Aliquo greeted new arrivals and took their $15 entrance fees. In return, he handed each one a single berry from his jacket pocket.

“You pop it in your mouth and scrape the pulp off the seed, swirl it around and hold it in your mouth for about a minute,” he said. “Then you’re ready to go.” He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida’s Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.

During the 1970s, a ruling by the Food and Drug Administration dashed hopes that an extract of miraculin could be sold as a sugar substitute. In the absence of any plausible commercial application, the miracle fruit has acquired a bit of a cult following.

Sina Najafi, editor in chief of the art magazine Cabinet, has featured miracle fruits at some of the publication’s events. At a party in London last October, the fruit, he said, “had people testifying like some baptismal thing.”

The berries were passed out last week at a reading of “The Fruit Hunters,” a new book by Adam Leith Gollner with a chapter about miracle fruit.

Bartenders have been experimenting with the fruit as well. Don Lee, a beverage director at the East Village bar Please Don’t Tell, has been making miracle fruit cocktails on his own time, but the bar probably won’t offer them anytime soon. The fruit is highly perishable and expensive — a single berry goes for $2 or more.

Lance J. Mayhew developed a series of drink recipes with miracle fruit foams and extracts for a recent issue of the cocktail magazine Imbibe and may create others for Beaker & Flask, a restaurant opening later this year in Portland, Ore.

He cautioned that not everyone enjoys the berry’s long-lasting effects. Despite warnings, he said, one woman became irate after drinking one of his cocktails. He said, “She was, like, ‘What did you do to my mouth?’ ”

Mr. Aliquo issues his own warnings. “It will make all wine taste like Manischewitz,” he said. And already sweet foods like candy can become cloying.

He said that he had learned about miracle fruit while searching ethnobotany Web sites for foods he could make for a diabetic friend.

The party last week was his sixth “flavor tripping” event. He hopes to put on a much larger, more expensive affair in June. Although he does sell the berries on his blog, www.flavortripping.wordpress.com, Mr. Aliquo maintains that he isn’t in it for the money. (He said he made about $100 on Friday.) Rather, he said, he does it to “turn on a bunch of people’s taste buds.”

He believes that the best way to encounter the fruit is in a group. “You need other people to benchmark the experience,” he said. At his first party, a small gathering at his apartment in January, guests murmured with delight as they tasted citrus wedges and goat cheese. Then things got trippy.

“You kept hearing ‘oh, oh, oh,’ ” he said, and then the guests became “literally like wild animals, tearing apart everything on the table.”

“It was like no holds barred in terms of what people would try to eat, so they opened my fridge and started downing Tabasco and maple syrup,” he said.

Many of the guests last week found the party through a posting at www.tThrillist.com. Mr. Aliquo sent invitations to a list of contacts he has been gathering since he and a friend began organizing StreetWars, a popular urban assassination game using water guns.

One woman wanted to see Mr. Aliquo eat a berry before she tried one. “What, you don’t trust me?” he said.

She replied, “Well, I just met you.”

Another guest said, “But you met him on the Internet, so it’s safe.”

The fruits are available by special order from specialty suppliers in New York, including Baldor Specialty Foods and S. Katzman Produce. Katzman sells the berries for about $2.50 a piece, and has been offering them to chefs.

Mr. Aliquo gets his miracle fruit from Curtis Mozie, 64, a Florida grower who sells thousands of the berries each year through his Web site, www.miraclefruitman.com. (A freezer pack of 30 berries costs about $90 with overnight shipping.) Mr. Mozie, who was in New York for Mr. Gollner’s reading, stopped by the flavor-tripping party.

Mr. Mozie listed his favorite miracle fruit pairings, which included green mangoes and raw aloe. “I like oysters with some lemon juice,” he said. “Usually you just swallow them, but I just chew like it was chewing gum.”

A large group of guests reached its own consensus: limes were candied, vinegar resembled apple juice, goat cheese tasted like cheesecake on the tongue and goat cheese on the throat. Bananas were just bananas.

For all the excitement it inspires, the miracle fruit does not make much of an impression on its own. It has a mildly sweet tang, with firm pulp surrounding an edible, but bitter, seed. Mr. Aliquo said it reminded him of a less flavorful cranberry. “It’s not something I’d just want to eat,” he said.

[Tom Storer]

I guess the attraction here is the weirdness of having your palate not work the way it usually does. Otherwise, what's the attraction of making cheese, Brussels sprouts or beer taste sugary?

[JSngry]

There's a lot of interesting (or "interesting" depending on how you look at it...) work being done right in "fine dining" circles now with "food chemistry" and the making of foods that don't taste, feel, or texture the way they look. Not being a practicing foodie, I can't name names, but Bourdain did a special last year(?) about some European chef who's on the cutting edge of this, and little by little some other outposts of the techniques are popping up. This seems to be right in line with all of that,

[Dave James]

I guess the attraction here is the weirdness of having your palate not work the way it usually does. Otherwise, what's the attraction of making cheese, Brussels sprouts or beer taste sugary?

I think you might be onto something if you could make celery sticks taste like a Milky Way. If you happened to be in the weight management industry, the possibilities are endless.

Up over and out.

[Joe]

First read about this in CABINET magazine; good to see the story has not gone away.

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/23/

[JSngry]

Ok, here's the guy - Ferran Adrià

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferran_Adri%C3%A0

http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Ferran-Adri...n/dp/0061157074

http://www.esquire.com/features/food-drink...701-JULY_FERRAN

[Tom Storer]

There's a lot of interesting (or "interesting" depending on how you look at it...) work being done right in "fine dining" circles now with "food chemistry" and the making of foods that don't taste, feel, or texture the way they look. Not being a practicing foodie, I can't name names, but Bourdain did a special last year(?) about some European chef who's on the cutting edge of this, and little by little some other outposts of the techniques are popping up. This seems to be right in line with all of that,

Nah, I respectfully disagree. On the one hand you have cooks who are artists, working with feverish inspiration to come up with surprising refinements, and on the other a berry that changes sour into sweet in your mouth, period. Which would you rather do, eat at this guy's restaurant or eat some goat's cheese and have it taste like a marshmallow?

[robviti]

old news. long ago i indulged in a herb that made everything i ate taste delicious.

[catesta]

There's a lot of interesting (or "interesting" depending on how you look at it...) work being done right in "fine dining" circles now with "food chemistry" and the making of foods that don't taste, feel, or texture the way they look. Not being a practicing foodie, I can't name names, but Bourdain did a special last year(?) about some European chef who's on the cutting edge of this, and little by little some other outposts of the techniques are popping up. This seems to be right in line with all of that,

Nah, I respectfully disagree. On the one hand you have cooks who are artists, working with feverish inspiration to come up with surprising refinements, and on the other a berry that changes sour into sweet in your mouth, period. Which would you rather do, eat at this guy's restaurant or eat some goat's cheese and have it taste like a marshmallow?

Agree.

I realize this tricking the taste buds thing is the wave of the future and I have complete respect these folks coming up with all this creative "food chemistry" as JS puts it. But for me I'd rather go with a chef that is doing it the "old school" way.

When I see people like Mario Batali or Masaharu Morimoto on Iron Chef doing their thing I'm truly amazed.

[JSngry]

But they're all about the same "game" - defying the expectations of your palate through chemistry. What Adrià & others like him are doing isn't "refinement", it's a culinary "deconstruction-ist revolution". I'd not at all be surprised to find out that some of the chefs experimenting with these techniques aren't incorporating this fruit into their repertoire.

What show was it recently, "Top Chef", or maybe "Dinner Impossible", that had a whole episode based on a challenge along these lines - use the new "food chemistry" to make a meal based exclusively around the premise of nothing tasting or feeling oir chewing or smelling like it looks.

This is all still pretty "trendy" stuff, by no way yet int he mainstream. It might well never get there. But it is happening & it is creating a "buzz" in "foodie" circles.

[catesta]

I guess the attraction here is the weirdness of having your palate not work the way it usually does. Otherwise, what's the attraction of making cheese, Brussels sprouts or beer taste sugary?

I think you might be onto something if you could make celery sticks taste like a Milky Way. If you happened to be in the weight management industry, the possibilities are endless.

Up over and out.

Use it as a weight loss tool, hmmm..., that is quite interesting.

[JSngry]

I realize this tricking the taste buds thing is the wave of the future and I have complete respect these folks coming up with all this creative "food chemistry" as JS puts it. But for me I'd rather go with a chef that is doing it the "old school" way.

For now, yeah, no doubt, especially at the prices these these type meals are going for now.

And probably forever, overall.

But I'll admit it - if I had a chance to go to Adrià's restaurant on somebody else's dime, I do it in a heartbeat, just to check it out.

But ain't no way I'm packing "foam" into a sack lunch for a road trip.

[catesta]

But they're all about the same "game" - defying the expectations of your palate through chemistry. What Adrià & others like him are doing isn't "refinement", it's a culinary "deconstruction-ist revolution". I'd not at all be surprised to find out that some of the chefs experimenting with these techniques aren't incorporating this fruit into their repertoire.

What show was it recently, "Top Chef", or maybe "Dinner Impossible", that had a whole episode based on a challenge along these lines - use the new "food chemistry" to make a meal based exclusively around the premise of nothing tasting or feeling oir chewing or smelling like it looks.

This is all still pretty "trendy" stuff, by no way yet int he mainstream. It might well never get there. But it is happening & it is creating a "buzz" in "foodie" circles.

I know there was an episode of "Next Iron Chef" last season where they did something like that. They all had to cook with un-conventional equipment and specific chemistry ingredients.

Edited May 28, 2008 by catesta

[JSngry]

I guess the attraction here is the weirdness of having your palate not work the way it usually does. Otherwise, what's the attraction of making cheese, Brussels sprouts or beer taste sugary?

I think you might be onto something if you could make celery sticks taste like a Milky Way. If you happened to be in the weight management industry, the possibilities are endless.

Up over and out.

Use it as a weight loss tool, hmmm..., that is quite interesting.

Yeah, this movement has the potential to be the new NASA (or something)...taking the discoveries of something highly "specialized" and applying it to stuff that everybody can - and will - use.

[catesta]

I realize this tricking the taste buds thing is the wave of the future and I have complete respect these folks coming up with all this creative "food chemistry" as JS puts it. But for me I'd rather go with a chef that is doing it the "old school" way.

But ain't no way I'm packing "foam" into a sack lunch for a road trip.

hehe

[JSngry]

But they're all about the same "game" - defying the expectations of your palate through chemistry. What Adrià & others like him are doing isn't "refinement", it's a culinary "deconstruction-ist revolution". I'd not at all be surprised to find out that some of the chefs experimenting with these techniques aren't incorporating this fruit into their repertoire.

What show was it recently, "Top Chef", or maybe "Dinner Impossible", that had a whole episode based on a challenge along these lines - use the new "food chemistry" to make a meal based exclusively around the premise of nothing tasting or feeling oir chewing or smelling like it looks.

This is all still pretty "trendy" stuff, by no way yet int he mainstream. It might well never get there. But it is happening & it is creating a "buzz" in "foodie" circles.

I know there was an episode of "Next Iron Chef" last season where they did something like that. They all had to un-conventional equipment and specific chemistry ingredients.

That's it!

[catesta]

Yeah, I remember most of them struggled with that challenge.

[Dave James]

old news. long ago i indulged in a herb that made everything i ate taste delicious.

Now that's funny!

Up over and out.

[Tom Storer]

But they're all about the same "game" - defying the expectations of your palate through chemistry. What Adrià & others like him are doing isn't "refinement", it's a culinary "deconstruction-ist revolution". I'd not at all be surprised to find out that some of the chefs experimenting with these techniques aren't incorporating this fruit into their repertoire.

I looked at your links on Adria and he doesn't seem to be doing chemistry-lab stuff at all, merely preparing ingredients in novel ways and combinations. Even "molecular gastronomy" is not mad-scientist stuff. It's just about understanding the physics of cooking in order to cook better. Adria and co. are just cooking unusual dishes--my impression is that it's more about saying, "this ingredient is the last thing you'd think of in a dessert, but if we prepare it a certain way and surround it with certain other things, it not only surprises the palate, but it works as a dessert," or "let's take this neutral ingredient, cook it and flavor/color it with some exotic fruit or vegetable, then cut it into long strips, dry it out, and serve it as a little crunchy starter snack. No one will even guess what it is!" (Entirely invented examples, but I think that's the approach.)

But I do see your point that the general theme of surprising the palate is what Adria and co. share with miracle berry salesmen...

[Rooster_Ties]

One problem that could be solved with this magic berry, is -- how do I put this delicately...

Zappa in New York, disc #1, track 3