Miracle Fruit – Synsepalum Dulcificum

The miracle fruit experience itself was awesome. I’ve tried it three times now. The fruits definitely vary in potency, although I don’t know whether the potency is altered by what one has eaten before the miracle fruit. Some people seemed to have a more mild experience, and others’ tastes were drastically altered. No one got a dud. Even the three times I tried it, it was different each time. The first time was more mild, the second (at the party) was quite dramatic, and the third was more mild again.

Limes tasted like lime candy, lemons like lemonade, and meyer lemons and red grapefruit were some of the most tasty things I’ve ever eaten in my life. On the other hand, pineapples and kiwi were cloying, coffee was mostly unchanged, and wine was just plain disgusting. It was clever of Abi to bring a very nice bottle that purported to have grapefruit as one of its primary flavor notes; unfortunately, the miracle fruit didn’t allow one to taste any of the acids and sour notes that play on one’s tongue when one drinks wine. So it tasted like a really, really cheap white wine. It turned what was supposedly a delicious bottle into Franzia, or, worse, bum wine. Oh well. Miracle fruit giveth, and miracle fruit taketh away.

I also decided to get some goat cheese because of its distinctive sourness. I picked up some of my absolute favorite cheese in the world, Humboldt Fog, which is sold near my house at Brookville Grocery in Cleveland Park for, amazingly, far less per pound than it costs to buy an entire five-pound wheel directly from Cypress Grove Chevre. A five-pound wheel is $85 ($17/pound) direct from the farm (plus shipping), while Brookville has quarter-pound sectors at $13.99/pound. It’s $20/pound from the cheese counter at Eastern Market, and they have the added cost of being huge assholes. So I got a couple $6 blocks of Humboldt Fog to taste after the bulk of the crowd left my house (sorry guys, it’s damn good cheese). And wow, it was amazing with the miracle fruit. The sour flavors were still present but subtler, while the earthy sweetness was enhanced dramatically. I love Humboldt Fog anyway, but it was an entirely new and amazing experience with the miracle fruit. If you ever find a way to give miracle fruit a shot, I highly recommend a good goat cheese.

I also got several different stouts and bitter beers. Guinness was good with it, but the real stars were the more serious stouts. Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout (my favorite beer, maybe?) was heavenly, and Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout (a good, but normally very bitter beer) was amazingly smooth and creamy. They both seemed to have more body, and more of a flavorful sweetness than stout normally has. The lovely bitter notes, again, were not entirely masked, so unlike what the miracle fruit did to wine, stout was still stout. It maintained all of its characteristics, the miracle fruit merely altered the dynamics of the characteristics, emphasizing the chocolatey, earthy, malty, and fermenty flavors, while smoothing out the bitterness. Many people in attendance described the chocolate stout as tasting “just like ice cream.”

Overall, it was a blast. Everyone had fun, and no one reported any ill effects. And even though the miraculous effect only lasted about half an hour, I will never taste citrus the same way again. It may be impossible for one to realize how much sweetness is present in citrus until one has had the sourness chemically masked. Lemons and limes are full of natural sugars, salts, and acids, but those flavors are normally pretty well-hidden behind the tartness. Now that I’ve tasted them, however, I think I will always be able to detect those flavors in them. It’s like those magic eye posters, or most riddles… they’re sometimes tough to “get,” but when you’ve seen them once or heard the answer, it’s easy to find again and it makes perfect sense.

Jacob has a full write-up at Eat Foo (cross-posted to his site), and Abi posted some photos. Martin of Boztopia was in attendance and made some brief remarks about his (apparently less dramatic) experience. And Natasha of Eat Foo was also there, so maybe she’ll post a write-up as well. If you have the chance, you should definitely give it a try some time. And if you want to order some, email me and I’ll give you contact info for the source from whom I got the miracle fruit you can get it from this guy.