Miracle Fruit

On Saturday our friend Keith had a tasting party. I've done wine tasting before, but this was different. We had lemons, limes, grapes, carrots, mustard, tabasco sauce, apricots, cheese, strawberries, cranberry juice, pickles, grapefruit juice, radishes, salt & vinegar potato chips, and many more goodies. So what's the big deal? Before we tasted all of these, we ate miracle fruit.

You may be thinking, "Is 'miracle fruit' code for some weird drug?" and "What does it do?". Miracle fruit is an actual fruit. It's a little red berry about the size of a coffee bean that's native to West Africa. When eaten before other foods, miracle fruit makes other things taste sweeter.

I'm not sure how to describe how miracle fruit tastes other than it just tastes like a peel. It has a pit, so you chew the skin from the pit, spit out the pit, and chew the peel and tiny bit of meaty stuff for about two minutes, making sure to coat all parts of your mouth. Everyone did this, and then the tasting began.

Everyone brought something they thought would be fun to taste, hence the assortment of foods listed above. The first thing I tried was a lemon. I bit right in to a lemon wedge and it was wonderful. It was a little like lemonade, or a lemon Sour Patch Kid. Limes were delicious as well. My other favorites were the grapes (Tastes just like candy!) and the salt & vinegar chips. The mustard was interesting; it tasted like candy mustard. In fact, that became a running joke. The first person to try a new food was frequently questioned by the others about how it tasted, and the answer was usually, "Like candy tabasco sauce," or "Like candy pickles."

Everyone got a little giddy just off the novelty of the experience, and some people got really adventurous; tired of the food on display, they went through Keith's kitchen cabinets to find more things to taste. This led Zach to drink an entire spoonful of vinegar. He loved every drop.

I don't know a lot about the science behind miracle fruit, but I think it has something to do with interfering with shape of taste receptors. A biomedical engineer was among the crowd and he explained a bit about taste receptors, but I was too busy eating candy cheese to take it all in.