Champedak
Artocarpus integer · Fruit
Top 10 pairings
Champedak (Artocarpus integer) is a Southeast Asian tropical fruit and a close cousin of the jackfruit, prized for its soft, custardy, deep-golden arils and an intense, sweet, almost durian-like perfume. Smaller and far more aromatic than jackfruit, it is eaten fresh straight from the rind and, most famously, dipped in batter and deep-fried whole as the beloved street snack champedak goreng across Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. It is a distinct species from both jackfruit and breadfruit, set apart by its heady fragrance, slippery-tender flesh and thin, smooth, latex-heavy rind.
Picking a good onedrag
Gold, heavy, richly perfumedSlack, weeping, fermenting
Soft and loudEat todayPerfume at its heaviest, arils at their most custardy — the day for champedak goreng. Two or three days at room temperature is all it has. Seeds boiled or roasted, never raw.
RindDeep brown-gold, the rind thin and taut over the flesh
Tap and squeezeHollow still, giving all over but springing back
SmellLoud and heady, carrying right across the stall
Stalk endStub dry and corky, a little crusted latex left
What you get from one
30%
Edible part
Roughly a third of the whole fruit comes off as arils — but treat that as approximate: it is borrowed by analogy with jackfruit, whose pulp Morton puts at 25-40% of fruit weight, because no measured champedak figure exists. The thin latex-heavy rind, the clingy core and the big flat seeds are the rest, and those seeds are food only once boiled or roasted.