What should I eat/drink when I get my Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets?

[dnooman]

These are the tablets that make a lemon taste like candy and other assorted weirdness. Link here.

I know I'm gonna try citrus. I've read mixed results with beer. I may just sample every condiment in my fridge to see if anything is surprising enough. I'll likely be sharing them with friends though, so I'd like to have some good ideas ahead of time.

Anyone tried them, and if so, what elicited the best response?

[ZipperJJ]

Brussel sprouts!

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Try a strong yerba mate tea.

[Becky2844]

Green olives and/or olive juice. Dill pickles.

[Acid Lamp]

Very bitter beers with high IBU. Lemons and limes

[Ludovic]

One that pops into mind is ginseng. It is too overpoweringly bitter for my tastes but perhaps has some other flavors that might shine through better otherwise. Or maybe it was just other ingredients in the ginseng tea.

[Lightray]

I brought some to work where we did some experiments For Science! (all chemists & engineers at work). Lemons were the best -- not candylike, but very citrusy. Sour Patch Kids went over well, but were really too sweet for me. Coffee drinkers said it "ruined" the taste, but I thought tea wasn't bad.

One brave soul swigged some vinegar. I don't recommend it: wasn't a problem until it got past his taste buds, when the burn triggered his gag reflex and ended up spewing it over the whiteboard.

Also: do not try too close to lunchtime. The effects linger quite a while for some people, and it'll mess up the taste of your lunch. Also, if too hungry, you're likely to overeat sour things, and end up with a sour stomach. I gobbled down a couple of whole Meyer lemons and felt a bit queasy that afternoon.

[fluiddruid]

I actually really liked vinegar actually, but we used balsamic and I'm already a fan of vinegary foods. I kept taking little sips, nom nom. However, lemons were the biggest hit. Stop yourself before you destroy your tongue though.

Bleu cheese was interesting -- made it taste very mild and vaguely sweet. I liked it.

Very bitter beer was also interesting, but kind of tasted bland and ruined (we tried Old Speckled Hen).

[Noelq]

Ketchup was amazing.

If they are adults, try smoking a cigar. Totally changes the taste to a weird thing.

[puddleglum]

Strawberries and kiwis are really amazing on miracle berries.

[Little Bird]

Apple Cider Vinegar. Tasted like the best, crispest apple juice I've ever had.

[audiobottle]

One word of advice, be careful how much lemon and other acidic foods you try in one go. I went nuts with it with some friends several years back and my tongue and teeth ached for days. It was like being 13 years old and eating a whole pack of Sour Patch Kids at the movie theater all over again.

[Khadaji]

Guinness Stout

[lokij]

A couple of things stood out from my little experiment with them a couple of years ago. Orange juice was amazingly, incredibly, stomach churning-ly sweet. It tasted like syrup with sugar in it.. just awful. Celery on the other hand was a revelation. Poor, humble mostly bland celery on miracle fruit tasted crisply sweet with a tantalizing parade of flavor notes. I must have eaten five stalks of celery that night.

[Sattua]

Another vote for dark beers. They taste like ice cream. Tonic water was also extremely nice--everybody's favorite. But it's got lots of sugar in it anyway.

[ralph124c]

What does raw garlic taste like?

[StGermain]

I wonder if one could use these as a diet aid? Making celery taste wonderful might make between-meal snacking a whole different world.

StG

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by StGermain

I wonder if one could use these as a diet aid? Making celery taste wonderful might make between-meal snacking a whole different world.

StG

Hm, I have some miracle fruit, and a bunch of celery. I may give it a try. I normally snack on plain celery and plain cucumbers as I happen to like them so it wouldn't be any net benefit to add miracle fruit to the mix. I normally save them for people who have never tried it before.

[pravnik]

A vodka martini. I don't really know why, I don't drink a lot of martinis, but "vodka" wa the first thing that popped in my head that I'd be curious to try.

[typoink]

Beer is kinda only worth it if you don't normally like beer; otherwise it mostly makes it milder. I DID try it with an IPA that's almost too bitter for me, and it made it into a much smoother drink, but still didn't really impress me.

The best I've had was UGLI fruit. It tastes something like a mix of lemon and orange normally; very flavorful, but almost too tart to eat. Miracle fruit took that edge off. Red grapefruit also becomes nearly transcendent (but I think that normally, too).

[typoink]

Originally Posted by pravnik

A vodka martini. I don't really know why, I don't drink a lot of martinis, but "vodka" wa the first thing that popped in my head that I'd be curious to try.

I don't think this would have much affect. Miracle fruit mainly impacts bitter and sour flavors; vodka doesn't have much of either.

[dnooman]

I probably should have prefaced this by asking for people to clarify if it was a random suggestion, or something they had tried and was worth eating with these.

From what I hear they don't tend to ruin much. I wonder what some of my favorite regular meals would taste like. I'll report any mentionable things we try.

[cmyk]

Ghost pepper!


Just kidding. Don't do that.

[dnooman]

Originally Posted by cmyk

Ghost pepper!


Just kidding. Don't do that.

Wasn't that recently supplanted by some other pepper as being the hottest in the world? If so, it's name wasn't nearly as cool or memorable, so I'll continue to refer to the Ghost pepper, or Bhut Jolokia or whatever, as the hottest peper around. Did you know you can get Ghost Chili pepper flakes at Thinkgeek now? That has evil, evil prank written all over it.

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

I just remember something that is both bitter and sour, but it is a regional thing, Redwood Sorrel. It is edible but not something you want to gorge on due to the amount of oxalic acid in it. It is all over the place around here. I may just have to finally buy some tablets myself to give it a go. I've always wanted to try it.

[BigT]

This is just a suggestion, but get your hands on one of those candies that have a sour part clearly intended for kids. Juicy Drop Pops are a good one, and so are some Baby Bottle pops. I bet they'd taste better without all that sourness.

In fact, seeing as I have a whole box of the Juicy Drop Pops that's old and thus even more sour, I'm thinking about trying to get some of these tablets so I can finish them off.

Oh, and another idea: if you are a super taster who can't eat stuff like cilantro, maybe try that now that the bitterness won't be so strong. Maybe you'll find out why so many people like it.

[Khadaji]

My suggest of Stout was neither random nor something I had tried. It is something I will try if I ever buy some miracle fruit. (I've thought about it but never pulled the trigger.)

[typoink]

To anyone who hasn't tried miracle fruit, I want to mention that the most interesting thing I've found about it is that it really doesn't make things taste artificial, masked, cloying, or like your sense of taste is limited. It legitimately just makes things taste different.

It's a bit of a novelty, but it's a really interesting one.

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Ooo! Just thought of another one: huckleberries. The kind we have native around here are iVaccinium ovatum and they pack a sour bite, even when perfectly ripe. I don't know that I've ever tasted any other varieties, but there are many.

[Lightray]

Originally Posted by BigT

Oh, and another idea: if you are a super taster who can't eat stuff like cilantro, maybe try that now that the bitterness won't be so strong. Maybe you'll find out why so many people like it.

To most people with a taste aversion to the evil weed, cilantro, it doesn't taste bitter; it tastes like dishsoap. Miracle berries would do nothing to make it less vile.

[TruCelt]

I didn't try these, but I'm told that Gin and tonic with lime was transcendant. The only other one I've heard that I didn't see here was crab apples.

And have some Tums on hand; there's a reason why your mouth tries to protect your stomach from all this stuff. I recommend just chewing a couple as you go rather than waiting for the pain.

[CheapBastid]

Anyone try brussel sprouts? Any other bitter/sour food suggestions?

[medstar]

How about raw cranberries?