Miracle Fruit Party

 

This is miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum),which hales from west Africa. It makes sour and acid foods taste sweet. Take a berry and put it in your mouth and remove what little pulp and skin are covering the large seed.Work on removing all the pulp for about a minute. Then hold this pulp in your mouth for about 5 minutes, chewing to make sure the fruit comes in good contact with your taste buds. The seed can be saved for planting later in hopes of getting a bush of your own that will produce fruit in about 2 years (hopefully). Then taste the foods you have available to experience the changes in taste.
The results of our tasting varied, and could be related to the berries themselves or how effectively the the small amount of pulp was distributed in the mouth.The pictures I have seen of miracle fruit showed bright red shiny berries, You can see these are not, but they still worked. I do not know if they were older or less mature than the ones I have seen in pictures. One person said it made no change in taste for her but everyone else said that there was a definite effect. We tasted a lot of different things:
limes- sweet
grapefruit-sweet
calamondin oranges -sweet even though this is the most sour thing I have ever eaten
meyer lemons-sweet
clementines-very sweet
extra sharp Vermont cabot cheese-mellow and good.creamier, and I guess sweeter
sour cream=no taste
feta cheese- delicious
cranberries-sweeter
cranberry juice-sweet and good
grape juice-sweet but not as improved in sweetness as some of the other food
grapefruit/pomegranate juice- Bitter, maybe nothing could improve it
orange juice-taste like sugar added
vegetable juice- I don't like but berries made it pretty good
coffee- no difference
vinegar- tasted sweet in mouth but burned on the way down.(If you do this, take small sips)
hot sauce- sweet, but still hot
tomatoes-I mean wonderful
onion (raw)- no difference

All of the tested foods were either improved or there was no effect as noted above, except the grapefruit/pomegranate, which actually seemed more bitter under the miracle berry influence.
In retrospect, it would have been better to taste each tested food before the berry was eaten. That way the effect would have been even more pronounced with the memory of the food still on your mind.
At any rate, a good time was had by all. If I am able to grow some fruit, we will do this again.