Soursop
Annona muricata · Tropical fruit
Top 10 pairings
Soursop (Annona muricata), known across the Spanish-speaking tropics as guanábana, is the large, dark-green, soft-spined fruit of a small evergreen tree in the custard-apple family and a close relative of the cherimoya. Beneath its prickly skin lies soft, white, fibrous, cotton-like flesh studded with hard black seeds, with a creamy sweet-tart flavour often likened to a blend of strawberry, pineapple and sour citrus. Too soft and sour to be a popular eat-out-of-hand fruit, it is consumed above all as juice, agua fresca, smoothies, nectar and ice cream throughout tropical America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.
Picking a good onedrag
Firm and green, ripens at homeWeeping, sour, fermenting
Just yieldingPeak eatingBest now. Halve it and spoon the white flesh out, setting every hard black seed aside: they carry an irritant oil and are never chewed or crushed. Once it is at this point the fridge buys two or three days more.
SkinGreen warming to a slight yellow-green
SqueezeYields to gentle thumb pressure at the shoulders
SmellSweet strawberry and pineapple at arm's length
Stem endStem browning, the shoulder softening around it
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