How to cook sapodilla

Information for sapodilla in our free cooking ingredients collection.

Sapodilla

The sapodilla is nearly round and about 2 to 4 inches in diameter. Its thin, brownish skin is easy to peel when the fruit is ripe. The translucent flesh has a sweet flavor reminiscent of honey and apricots and a “melt in the mouth” texture. The center of the fruit contains about 3 to 12 hard, shiny black seeds.

Family - Sapotaceae
Scientific name - Manilkara zapota
Common name - sapodilla

High in vitamin C and fiber

Varieties

The extensive cultivation of the sapodilla in India has resulted in numerous varieties. Brown Sugar produces fragrant, juicy fruits whose flesh is pale brown and richly sweet. The flesh of the Prolific variety is light pinkish tan, mildly fragrant, smooth-textured, and sweet. Russel bears large fruits that are rich and sweet, but it is not a prolific producer. A new selection, Tikal, yields fruits that have an excellent flavor but are smaller.

Origin and botanical facts

The sapodilla plant is believed to have originated in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, northern Belize, and northeast Guatemala. The plant was highly prized by the Aztecs, who called the fruit “tzapotl”, from which the Spanish derived the name sapodilla. The plant is now grown in almost all the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, the East Indies, and the Americas. The main producers are the Central American countries, Australia, India, Indonesia, and, in the United States, California and Florida.

Equally at home in humid and relatively dry environments, the sapodilla tree is a slow-growing evergreen that can reach up to 100 feet in height. The tree bears small, ball-shaped white flowers borne on slender stalks at the leaf bases. A resinous sap called “chicle” was once collected from sapodilla tree trunks for making chewing gum. This practice has largely been replaced by the use of synthetic ingredients. The mature sapodilla tree can yield from 2,000 to 3,000 fruits in a single year. Because the fruits are easily perishable and fragile, they do not ship well and therefore are relatively unknown outside their areas of origin.

How to cook sapodilla

Because the high tannin and latex contents of unripe fruits make them astringent and unpalatable, sapodillas should be eaten only when ripe. Unripe sapodilla fruits should be left to ripen at room temperature and refrigerated after ripening. The sapodilla is best eaten raw and chilled, by cutting in half and spooning the pulp out of the skin. It can be added to salads or desserts such as ice cream and sorbet. In Malaysia, the fruit is stewed with lime juice or fried with ginger. In India, it is eaten as a dried fruit.

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