The papaya (Carica papaya), known as pawpaw across much of the tropics and as fruta bomba in Cuba, is the large, melon-like berry of a fast-growing giant herb native to Central America. Ripe, its musky-sweet orange-to-salmon flesh is scooped from a hollow centre packed with peppery black seeds and eaten fresh with a squeeze of lime; hard and green, the same fruit is shredded raw into the sour-hot Southeast Asian salad som tam. It also gives the world papain, the protein-digesting enzyme used to tenderise meat.