Fruit of the Day: Jatobá

Based on various descriptions I read on the interwebs, a snippet of the jatobá's Zagat review might read something like this:

This fruit has an "offensive" odour "similar to strong cheese". It is sometimes called "stinking toe" because of its smell.

Yay.

The jatobá (also called "Brazilian cherry," even though as far as I could tell there is nothing cherry-like about it) looks like a giant tamarind, and its pods are very hard. So hard that they're used to make wood! And so hard that, to crack one open, I had to put it under the leg of a chair, and then not just sit on the chair (...nothing!) but actually stomp my foot on the seat, at which point the jatobá pod finally gave in.

The flesh, if you could call it that, was quite dry, almost like plaster. It surround two very hard seeds. And I can confirm that the jatobá did, indeed, smell quite strong. I tasted a bit of it, and looks (and smell) were not deceiving: Jatobá tastes like pungent plaster.

I'm glad for its sake that it turns into nice-looking wood.
UFF Fruit Rating: