The peanut butter fruit of South America is something we all need to get our hands on once in a lifetime
There are many fruits that don’t live up to their names. Honey, not blackberry jam, is the predominant taste in the blackberry-jam fruit, and pineberries do not taste like pineapples or berries. But the peanut butter fruit of South America will make you happy, not least because it offers more than it promises. But more about that later.
The peanut butter fruit – or Bunchosia Armeniaca, Bunchosia Argentea, to give it its official names – counts Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela as its places of origin, though we’ve also seen images of it in South India.
Image: Instagram/dee_sem
Ranging in colour from orange to red, this fruit resembles a grape tomato, but that’s where the similarity ends. In contrast to the tart or sweet juiciness of a tomato, a peanut butter fruit tastes and even smells like peanut butter. If you get a well ripened fruit in hand, you will find that it even has a texture very like the creamy spread in your peanut butter jar. And those in the know also speak of hints of berries and sweet potato, leading to the observation that this might have been better called the ‘peanut butter and jelly fruit’.
You can eat the peanut butter fruit raw or blend it into a milkshake, mix it into jams or bake it into cakes and muffins, as cooks in the Andes do.
Main image: Shutterstock
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