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Piel de Sapo melon
Cucumis melo · Melon
40 pairings
Piel de Sapo — Spanish for "toad skin" — is a large, oval winter melon with a green, dark-blotched rind and crisp, very sweet white flesh. The best-selling melon in Spain and a major Mediterranean market fruit, it belongs to the smooth-skinned Inodorus group of Cucumis melo, keeps for weeks, and is eaten chilled in wedges, cubed into fruit salad, blended into agua fresca, and served the Spanish way with cured jamón.
Picking a good onedrag
Just cut, rock hardSoft-ended and winey
Shop firmCrisp, honey-sweet and just perfumed — wedges, and the classic with jamón.Best eating
RindGround green turning faintly gold
Blossom endGives a millimetre, springs back
Stem scarStub dry and corky, scar tan
Smell at the blossom endAlmost nothing, a faint cucumber note
What to look for, from just cut, rock hard to soft-ended and winey.
What one gives you
46%
Usable yield
about 1 kg · rind and seeds out
2200 g
Typical weight
one specimen
Keeping ittap a band
Chilling sensitive: a day or two cold before serving is fine, but weeks below about 7 C pit the rind and darken it in long patchy streaks. Riper fruit takes cold better.
Humidity
90–95%
The thick hard rind holds its own water, so it needs no wrapping; too damp and rot starts at the cut stem long before the flesh tires.
Airflow
Gentle, never sealed
Sit it on a rack or in an open net rather than a bag — a whole melon sweats, and trapped damp starts rot at the cut stem.
Makes almost none, but answers to it
It makes almost no ethylene, but it answers to a neighbour's — that only hurries a softening you cannot undo, so keep it clear of bananas and apples. Its sugar was set at harvest.