"miracle fruit" news and stories

You probably remember hearing about The Miracle Fruit (containing the mysterious protein miraculin) earlier this year. It makes bitter and sour taste sweet, and, by altering those two flavors, makes everything taste like something else.

Surprise surprise, they turned it into a pill!

Available from ThinkGeek, the Miracle Fruit Tablets come in dodgy-looking packets of ten and will apparently blow your mind so much, they recommend only taking half a tablet to start.

Originally documented in France in 1725, the Miracle Fruit has been experiencing a renaissance of interest since 2007. We attribute the public fascination to the hope that one day cauliflower will taste like ice cream and vinegar will taste like ranch dressing. As people continue to invent crazy diets to lose weight, everyone is on the lookout for a way to make diet food taste more like Snickers bars. We wonder what it does to cabbage soup!

For now, people are mostly using the tablets recreationally. Two pills per person makes one heck of a crazy dinner party!

Source

• With one little West African berry, the sour turns sweet -- goat cheese tastes like cream cheese, lemon juice doesn't need sweetener.
• Fruits for fall -- Italian prune plum.
• Toronto food store, Culinarium, starts up a cow and lamb meat-share.
• Mill Street Brewery once again grabs Brewery of the Year at the Canadian Brewery Awards.
• Take a culinary trip through Elora.
• Restaurant Review: tasty seasonal ingredients at Pizzeria Libretto.
• Recipes: Artichoke-Cheese Dip, Steak Frites with Pan Reduction, and Easy Tortilla Salad.
• Wine: good tastes under $10 and low-cost burgundies.

• Blueberry season has started and they are now available at produce stands, u-pick farms and local markets.
  
• Rob Kasper and a bunch of Baltimore food bloggers get together and try miracle fruit. It makes the tart taste sweet and the bitter taste absolutely delectable.
  
• Whole grain crackers are easy to make at home and are far better than the ones you buy in a box.
  
• Ever have trouble figuring out which wine will go with dinner? Then it's time to check out "Wines That Love." Their labels are printed with images of foods with which they go well.
  
• Kate Shatzkin reviews Warren Brown's new book Cakelove (which I wrote about here) and determines that his recipes are hit or miss.
  
• In the Recipe Finder, a missing Lemon Cake recipe is found.
  
• Stir fry is a quick dinner that let's you get creative and use up what you have in your fridge.
  
• A new cookbook helps make cooking accessible for the blind.

Source

My grandmother likes to tell a story about how she was hypnotized in a stage show. Under hypnosis, she ate a lemon and thought it was an apple. It's hard to imagine doing that and not noticing the difference. However, with the miracle fruit, we all could be eating slices of lemon for dessert.

Slashfood blogger Emily Matcher wrote yesterday about the New York Times article on the miracle fruit. If you missed it, the miracle of the fruit is not that it cures cancer or creates world peace - it makes sour foods taste sweet.

As described on Wikipedia, "when the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule [miraculin] 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."

The miracle fruit is by no means a new discovery. It has been eaten for centuries in West Africa. Back in 2005, The Guardian wrote about a cafe in Japan where diners start the meal with a single miracle fruit and then proceed to eat dishes with 100 calories or less and love them!

Why haven't we seen the miracle fruit in diet products everywhere? The facts aren't clear. However, there is a BBC article that describes how an attempt to bring miracle fruit products to the US market was surprisingly and suddenly shut down by the US Food and Drug Administration.

Want to try one? Miracle Connect sells the berries! They cost $24 for six. They recommend two per person for a dinner party.

Tiny oyster growing operations are feeding New York's massive shellfish habit.

At "flavor tripping" parties, guests nibble miracle fruit, which turns sour flavors sweet. Vinegar becomes, for an hour or so, as sweet as apple juice; unadorned chevre turns into cheesecake.

Once considered bland, ricotta is taking center stage.

Eric Asimov, our wine and liquor critic, considers bitters.

The man who developed the frozen french fry dies at 99.

The Minimalist pairs soft shell crab with pasta.

Nothing says summer birthday party like a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Source