What does a pawpaw taste like?
I'm afraid I've
finally found a fruit I really don't like. I used to think
the reason I had odd memories of pawpaws is because (after our
family moved away from the farm), Mom would drive us out in the
country to pick the fruits, and I always arrived carsick.
However, I've been watching a pawpaw along our driveway all
summer, waiting for it to ripen up, and when the first fruits hit
the ground, I took the rest home to taste. There were no
cars involved, so I definitely wasn't nauseous, but the fruits
weren't something I'll seek out again.
Internet descriptions
of pawpaw flavor range from banana custard to plain banana, mango,
papaya, and pineapple. I'm not sure I know what banana
custard tastes like, but I can tell you definitively that pawpaws
taste nothing like the other fruits, except maybe having a hint of
the unpleasant flavor you get really close to the skin of an
unripe mango or papaya. (I suspect many of the folks
describing pawpaws were confusing flavor with texture --- pawpaws
do have a texture about halfway between a mango and a banana.)
If I had to describe
the flavor of pawpaws, I'd say they're sweet (of course) combined
with a slightly bitter taste and an almost over-powering floral
odor that sets me off the fruit. Perhaps if I'd held my nose
while eating, I would have liked the taste better?
Granted, there are
different varieties of pawpaws, as with other kinds of
fruits. And it's possible some of the cultivated varieties
taste better. But I like my fruits to have at least some
tartness to them, and pawpaws fail that test. That's why my
second experiment was to mash the flesh up with some lemon juice
and honey, then add it to our raspberries and whipped cream.
I hate to say it, but that was even less tasty than the flesh we
ate plain, and I didn't mind when Mark picked the pawpaw off his
berries.
I'd be curious to
hear from anyone who's grown named varieties of pawpaws.
What varieties are you growing, and what do you think of their
flavor?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I didn't like the taste of pawpaw either. I tried it on two different occasions and both times it was like eating flowers. There was just way to much floral taste and scent for me, which was a shame because all of the talk about mango-bannana had me excited.
However, I haven't given up hope for them yet. I'm going to plant a few cultivars and see if one of them tastes better to me. I might try fruit leather or something like that too.
I had a pawpaw tree in the yard of my first Florida house. The fruit was particularly obnoxious to me. So I'm with you. The tree has no place in my yard as a frueit producer
I have never tried one before, but I planted as "Sunshine" pawpaw about three years ago. It has blossomed but not fruited yet. I was hoping to try my first one next year if it fruited. Well, at any rate, it can't be worse than a durian.