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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

This isn't exclusive to exotic fruit either.

In a trip to central Washington, I bought a flat of Pluots (plum/apricot hybrids), and they were one of the most profound things I have ever eaten. So sweet and juicy, they almost burst like water balloons when you took a bite.

Less than four hours away from where they are grown, I have yet to find any varieties with the same magic available in grocery stores. They good ones are simply too delicate and too short lived.

It ends up being worth the trip every year to go when they are in season.

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In Virginia we have pawpaw fruit that taste like custard, but must be eaten soon after picking since they bruise very easily and don’t store or ship well.

> pawpaw fruit that taste like custard

Do you mean pawpaw, or custard apple (aka sugar apple in the US)?

https://www.starkbros.com/products/fruit-trees/pawpaw-trees

To eat cut in half and eat with a spoon. So good.

I planted a three variety pack 5ish years ago and got a lot last year. Safely a late freeze mostly got them this year

They are describing a fruit known in parts of the US as pawpaw and custard apple both. Never heard it called "sugar apple" but there are 2 different fruits known as custard apple so maybe you are thinking of a different one.

This is the one I meant: Annona squamosa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar-apple)

It's called custard apple in my country. We call papaya, pawpaw.

Any discussion of fruit needs to use their botanical names since they're called different things in different places.

Pawpaws are nothing compared to their better cousins in the Annonaceae family, and in particular the Cherimoya.

Downside; they all contain annonacin, which may cause Parkinsons. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annonacin

Whoah. Thanks for the warning. There's a squirrel that keeps trying to stash custard apples in my mother-in-law's planter in Thailand. They're tasty (and delivered by squirrels!), but I didn't know about the toxicity.

Very interesting, we talk of eating three thousands of fruits at year in any case. I wonder how the new hyped varieties of pawpaw would score.

I really appreciate your contribution. Thanks.

This is totally unrelated to this post, but the one I want to comment on (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22093297), I can't. I wonder if I could get a link to the pdf for The Priceless Gift by Cornelius Hirschberg? It's a very hard to find book :)

Similarly, there's a fruit that is supposedly found all over the midwest but that I can never find in Chicago: the "paw paw".

Apparently they don't travel or keep well, so supermarkets almost never stock them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba

You pretty much have to go to a pawpaw patch when they are ripe and eat them there.

Try it. You won't regret it.

Flavor Queen and Flavour king varieties. I grow both at home and at the orchard.

More profound to me are the European gage plums and esp the lovely yellow mirabelles. I also planted medlars and can’t seem to find anyone interested. Medlar Jam is sublime.

Oh my. Can I visit your orchard before we both ascend to the Heaviside layer?

> I also planted medlars and can’t seem to find anyone interested.

I made a medlar sorbet once, which was good but not great. But the single best scientific paper I have ever read is about the medlar. I happened across it on the new periodicals table at my college library, and had never seen anything like it. After reading it, I spent a long time thinking it might be satire, and that the fruit didn't actually exist. It was only years later that I finally had one. Summary and details of the paper here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4255177. Send me email if you'd like a copy and can't find access online.

yep, Pluots (and Atemoyas) are serious candidates

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