Fun With Miracle Fruit

Last night, I ripped into a ripe lemon. It tasted of delicious lemonade.


I tore into a tart lime. It tasted of Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice.


I scarfed down a fist full of goat cheese. It tasted like cheesecake.

I chugged a shot of Frank's Red Hot Sauce. It tasted like spicy fruit glaze.




Why was I eating these foods? And, more importantly, why did I perceive their taste differently? The answer is miracle fruit.



Inspired by a New York Times article (I was actually invited to the party discussed in the article, but could not attend), my roommate and I ordered miracle fruit tablets through e-bay.



We gathered a group of six adventurous palates and their possessors and let the tablets dissolve on our tongues. Ironically, the tablets tasted a bit sour themselves. After five to six minutes of rolling the tablet over my tongue, it had completely dissolved. The idea is that the protein in the fruit, called miraculin, will bind with the taste buds and act as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids.




We had set up a spread of foods that looked like some bizzaro buffet of things someone found around their house. The reality was that all of these items were selected for their acidity, bitterness or sourness that normally is tempered by a sweetener (e.g. sugar, honey, the Maillard reaction).



So what did they taste like?



The citrus fruits and hot sauce were the best of the bunch.


Grapefruit, a favorite of mine already, was especially delicious as its natural juices lost their astringency and simply refreshed with sweetness.



The hot sauce was a new experience entirely. It tasted as if someone had combined apple, mango and a dash of habanero, blended it with sugar and turned it into a syrup. Slightly piquant and wholly delicious.



The jalapeno actually lost its heat when eaten "on the pill" and the radish simply tasted like firm canned water chestnuts (a texture that I love, but somewhat bland). The gorgonzola cheese was made more mild by the pill and the brie tasted a bit sweeter, which did it well (as brie is often paired with fruit).

100% unsweetened chocolate was horrible, just as it is sans-miracle fruit. 70% was better, but didn't taste that different from a good 40-50% bar.

The schonzberries tasted like schonzberries.

The effect of the tablets wore off after about 15 minutes.

With the torrid pace we were eating at, that was probably a good thing.


There are no bad side effects to speak of, other that the fact that a few shots of hot sauce mixed with shots of apple cider vinegar (tasted like apple juice), oatmeal stout (chocolate milk) and all that citrus juice mixed in an empty stomach might not be the most savory combination.



In the end, it was a really fun experiment, that cost each patron about $5 a head for the pill and the food. Next time, we're going to try out the real berries.


Adventure to be continued....