# Bread Fruit **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2007, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694 "2007-08-07T01:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jeffr062](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f04885/32.png) [@Jeffr062](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeffr062)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/1 "2007-08-07T01:51:12Z")
Has anyone here ever eaten bread fruit? What’s it taste like? Any idea as to where I could buy some in Ohio? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/2 "2007-08-07T02:48:38Z")
[QUOTE=Jeffr062] Has anyone here ever eaten bread fruit? What’s it taste like? [/quote] … have a guess … ---
**Author:** ![askeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb9ed0/32.png) [@askeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/askeptic)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/3 "2007-08-07T03:11:59Z")
Here you go. Behold my [google-fu](http://www.myafroshop.info/freshfood.php) ---
**Author:** ![Mangosteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/4 "2007-08-07T03:12:29Z")
Tastes nothing like bread. More like a sweet potato. It grows in a tree, but its not like most fruits that you can eat raw. It has to be cooked (baked is best). I love 'em. Hawaii might be the closest place where you’ll find them. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/5 "2007-08-07T03:32:02Z")
It’s what ‘Juicy Fruit’ gum is supposed to taste like. In the same way that Grenadine is supposed to taste like pommagranite. By which I mean it doesn’t taste very much like that. It is often pickled as well! ---
**Author:** ![Jeffr062](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f04885/32.png) [@Jeffr062](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeffr062)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/6 "2007-08-07T03:47:43Z")
Thanks everone ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/7 "2007-08-07T04:11:40Z")
You know, if you’ve never tried baking a plantain, it’s worth a go. They’re…mealy, starchy, a little sweet, and a lot like I imagine breadfruit to be. But they’re awful once they cool down, so eat hot. I made poi once. It has almost no flavor, but I had a hard time stopping, once I started eating it. Carb addiction, I guess? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/8 "2007-08-07T05:51:58Z")
[QUOTE=Mangosteen] Tastes nothing like bread. More like a sweet potato. [/QUOTE] Nevertheless, that’s how it got its name: [QUOTE=Wikipedia] When cooked the taste is described as potato-like, or similar to fresh baked bread (hence the name). [/QUOTE] I’m not sure it tastes anything like modern American supermarket bread, but when it was named it must have tasted like bread did then. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/9 "2007-08-07T10:14:00Z")
I tried one many years ago - My dad was in the Customs & Excise and someone on a ship gave him a breadfruit to take home. Baked, it was like cooked potato, but with that sort of granular texture that you get in a ripe pear. The flavour was just blandly starchy. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/10 "2007-08-07T11:35:55Z")
Jules Verne gives a description of Breadfruit and its preparation in **20,000 Leagues Under the Sea**. It sounded interesting, but I’ve never seen it. The other place I know it from, of course, is _Mutiny on the Bounty_, but none of the movies (or the books I’ve read, with the exception of _The Bounty_) give a description of the plant or explain why they were picking it up. My understanding is that they wanted it as food for slaves in the Caribbean. After the Bounty fiasco, another ship picked up breadfruit and brought it to the Caribbean. Where it didn’t do well and the slaves wouldn’t eat it. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/11 "2007-08-07T13:38:31Z")
Actually, I’ve seen breadfruit grown rather commonly as ‘dooryard fruit’ throughout the Bahamas and Jamaica. It makes quite a handsome tree. But no, it does not seem to be tremendously popular as a food item there. This is a very cold-sensitive tree. The only specimen I knew to be grown outdoors in the United States (exclusive of Hawaii) was on Miami Beach in the 1970’s. A rather eccentric gentleman with a surplus of money grew a variety of tropical fruits on his property in Bal Harbor, Miami Beach. Even at the time, the land was worth fortunes per square inch. He had several acres which he surrounded with a three foot high concrete wall, and filled with topsoil. There he grew his little hobby garden, which included a breadfruit tree. This specimen was about 6 inches in diameter and perhaps 25 feet high (as I recall). It was his pride and joy. I was his “nursery inspector” with the state department of agriculture, and he would show off this tree on my every visit. In mid-January of 1977 there was a cold snap-- colder than usual in south Florida. On January 19, 1977 it actually snowed in Miami. The flakes didn’t stick, but they sure flew around impressively. By the next morning Miami looked like it had been blowtorched. Tropical plants were devastated, brown, curling, and dying everywhere. Farm row crops were wiped out. I spent the day driving around and taking pictures to document the devastation. And I visited my guy in Bal Harbor. The breadfruit had actually collapsed, lying full length on the ground with trunk split open and brown, shrivelled leaves scattered about. And sitting next to it, crying like a baby, was my tropical nurseryman. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/12 "2007-08-07T13:50:45Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] Jules Verne gives a description of Breadfruit and its preparation in **20,000 Leagues Under the Sea**. It sounded interesting, but I’ve never seen it… [/QUOTE] I’d be wary of some of the descriptions in that novel - he seems fairly close with the description of breadfruit, but some of the other culinary references seem dubiously fanciful, for example: > [@](#): > > “Yes, Professor, the sea supplies all my wants. Sometimes I cast my nets in tow, and I draw them in ready to break. Sometimes I hunt in the midst of this element, which appears to be inaccessible to man, and quarry the game which dwells in my submarine forests. My flocks, like those of Neptune’s old shepherds, graze fearlessly in the immense prairies of the ocean. I have a vast property there, which I cultivate myself, and which is always sown by the hand of the Creator of all things.” > > “I can understand perfectly, sir, that your nets furnish excellent fish for your table; I can understand also that you hunt aquatic game in your submarine forests; but I cannot understand at all how a particle of meat, no matter how small, can figure in your bill of fare.” > > “This, which you believe to be meat, Professor, is nothing else than fillet of turtle. Here are also some dolphins’ livers, which you take to be ragout of pork. My cook is a clever fellow, who excels in dressing these various products of the ocean. Taste all these dishes. Here is a preserve of sea-cucumber, which a Malay would declare to be unrivalled in the world; here is a cream, of which the milk has been furnished by the cetacea, and the sugar by the great fucus of the North Sea; and, lastly, permit me to offer you some preserve of anemones, which is equal to that of the most delicious fruits.” Mmm-mm! fruity sea anemone jam. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/13 "2007-08-07T13:56:27Z")
Well, Verne almost certainly had descriptions of breadfruit to use (in his prodigious library), but I’ll bet he had to rely on imagination and extrapolation more for his description of underwater treats. He was, after all, trying to “sell” Nemo’s undersea world to his audience. ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/14 "2007-08-07T17:39:59Z")
I bought one from a vendor in St Martin. I thought, “Mmmmm. . .Breadfruit”. I cut it up the next morning and we tried it raw with our coffee. One of the first things I did when we got back to the US was google “breadfruit”. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/15 "2007-08-07T17:51:22Z")
I’ve eaten it. There is nothing wrong with the taste, but it is terminally bland. Certainly beats starvation. They grow wild all over Barbados and presumably other Caribbean islands where they were imported (by Capt. Bligh on his second attempt, the first having ended in a … mutiny) to feed the slaves. You can freely harvest them from wild trees, but not very many Bajans do, it would seem. They are tall handsome trees and the fruit are between softball and basketball in size, green and nubbly. I would not want to be under one when it fell, but it is not as hard as a coconut. ---
**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/16 "2007-08-07T18:50:11Z")
[QUOTE=Chotii] You know, if you’ve never tried baking a plantain, it’s worth a go. They’re…mealy, starchy, a little sweet, and a lot like I imagine breadfruit to be. But they’re awful once they cool down, so eat hot. I made poi once. It has almost no flavor, but I had a hard time stopping, once I started eating it. Carb addiction, I guess? [/QUOTE] Breadfruit (aka “pana” in Puerto Rico) is nothing like plantains. Most of the latin roots and tubers are closer to pana. Yautia, ñame, and even yuca (cassava) are more like it. You could try your luck at supermarkets in areas with a strong puertorican presence. Most other latin nations are not really into it. Here, it is often boiled and served as a starch, just as you would serve any tuber or boiled green bananas (not plantains). I am not particularly fond of it. It is rather bland. It can also be sliced very thin and deep fried as chips. Like this, it has a very peculiar and appetizing sweet-bitter taste. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/17 "2007-08-07T20:08:29Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo] It can also be sliced very thin and deep fried as chips. Like this, it has a very peculiar and appetizing sweet-bitter taste. [/QUOTE] Yes, that’s my favorite way to have it. Much better than the boiled version. It’s a fairly common house-garden tree here. You don’t see it in the market much, though. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/18 "2007-08-07T20:12:14Z")
Breadfruit is best eaten ripe. How does one tell if breadfruit is ripe? When it smells like it’s rotten, otherwise it tends to taste rather bland. Hence most people will tell you that it is… :smack: ---
**Author:** ![myrnajean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@myrnajean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/myrnajean)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/19 "2007-08-07T20:23:50Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo] Breadfruit (aka “pana” in Puerto Rico) is nothing like plantains. Most of the latin roots and tubers are closer to pana. Yautia, ñame, and even yuca (cassava) are more like it. You could try your luck at supermarkets in areas with a strong puertorican presence. Most other latin nations are not really into it. Here, it is often boiled and served as a starch, just as you would serve any tuber or boiled green bananas (not plantains). I am not particularly fond of it. It is rather bland. It can also be sliced very thin and deep fried as chips. Like this, it has a very peculiar and appetizing sweet-bitter taste. [/QUOTE] Boiled and dressed with salt and olive oil along with the other roots and bacalao is how I had it in PR, and I loved it . They don’t sell it in the states very much. I found one, and I guess I prepared it wrong, or perhaps it was spoiled, It tasted really nasty, almost like burnt plastic or something. Do they sell it in cans? ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/20 "2007-08-07T20:30:58Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo] It can also be sliced very thin and deep fried as chips. Like this, it has a very peculiar and appetizing sweet-bitter taste. [/QUOTE] I’ve had it this way in Hawaii, as an accompaniment to grilled fish dishes and mango salsa, and it was very good. It’s funny - “toasted breadfruit slices” are mentioned in one of the Aubrey/Maturin novels as being a coveted treat when the _Surprise_ was in the South Pacific. Preserved Killick was particularly fond of them, even pinching them when the captain and the doctor weren’t looking. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694.md?page=2)