I had an interesting experience after dinner last night...I had a sour lemon for dessert- but it tasted like sweet nectar! There was nothing special about the lemon- before I ate it I had chewed on a 'fruta de milagro' or Miracle Fruit. The little red berry has a mystical property- when you eat it, the fruit alters your taste buds for about 30 minutes. The berry itself has very little flavor, just a twinge of sweetness- needless to say I was a bit skeptical that it would actually make a lemon taste deliciously sweet....but low and behold...it did!
I was very curious about this little miracle, so I googled it. I have attached some information that I found on Wikipedia....
The Miracle Fruit Plant, sometimes known as Miracle Berry, or Magic Berry (Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum) is a plant first documented by an explorer named Des Marchais during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet high in its native habitat, but does not usually grow higher than ten feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seeds are about the size of coffee beans.
The berry is sweet, and contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing bitter and sour foods (such as lemons and limes) consumed later to taste sweet. This effect lasts between thirty minutes and two hours. It is not a sweetener, as its effects depend on what is eaten afterwards, but has been used to sweeten bitter medicines.
Miracle fruit. (2008, February 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:44, February 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miracle_fruit&oldid=192580891
I was very curious about this little miracle, so I googled it. I have attached some information that I found on Wikipedia....
The Miracle Fruit Plant, sometimes known as Miracle Berry, or Magic Berry (Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum) is a plant first documented by an explorer named Des Marchais during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet high in its native habitat, but does not usually grow higher than ten feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seeds are about the size of coffee beans.
The berry is sweet, and contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called miraculin. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing bitter and sour foods (such as lemons and limes) consumed later to taste sweet. This effect lasts between thirty minutes and two hours. It is not a sweetener, as its effects depend on what is eaten afterwards, but has been used to sweeten bitter medicines.
Miracle fruit. (2008, February 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:44, February 19, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miracle_fruit&oldid=192580891
Labels: fruta de milagro
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