Pepino

Solanum muricatum · Fruit

40 pairings

The pepino (Solanum muricatum), also called pepino dulce or melon pear, is a soft, egg-shaped fruit of an evergreen shrub in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) — a close relative of the tomato, potato and eggplant. Mild, juicy and faintly sweet, its aromatic flesh tastes like a cross between honeydew melon and cucumber.

Picking a good onedrag

UnderripeOverripe

Cream and stripedMild, juicy and gently sweet — and about as sweet as it will get. The skin yellows further on the counter, but the sugar was fixed the day it was cut.Good buy

Ground colourCream to pale yellow, any purple stripes deepening

The squeezeFirm, with the faintest yield at the blossom end

Stem scarStub drying pale brown, held tight to the shoulder

SmellA faint melon note at the blossom end, only up close

Reading a just ripe one. Move the slider and the rest of this page — nutrition, pairings — re-scores with it.

What one gives you

200 g

Typical weight

one specimen

Keeping ittap a band

Held below about 7.5 C for a fortnight or more it pits, and the skin and flesh brown — damage that only shows once it warms up again. The fridge is the wrong place.

Almost no output of its own

It gives off so little ethylene it will not ripen its neighbours. A green one near bananas loses its green faster, but that is colour only — it does not sweeten with it.

Preparing