I've never eaten a mangosteen before, but I bought a smoothee today that is a blend of Brazilian açai berry and pureed mangosteen pulp. Truly dee-lish!

Both are touted as one of the "new" breed of "superfruits", high in antioxidants (though indigenous people have presumably been eating them for aeons).

The mangosteen pulp looks a little bit like the litchee fruits we used to eat in South Africa.

It seems the mangosteen is adding a creamy, sweet banana-like quality to the açai berries (which, on their own, have a pleasantly sour taste, sort of like a cross between a blueberry and a cranberry, with a curious, earthy cinnamon-like note added...)

Are you a Mangosteen fan? When and where did you discover it? Have you some clever ways to prepare it/serve it?

Do the little white "fingers" of fruit contain a hard pit within?

At first I thought I was on the perfume board because mangosteen is a note in one of my Mary Kay perfumes, Velocity. Velocity is citrusy perfume a lot like Happy.
I have never tried the fruit.

This is a fruit that only very recently has been allowed to enter the U.S. and only if it is irradiated. I'm dying to eat a mangosteen, but I haven't seen any in a store, yet. I did see them in Paris years ago, but had no idea how to go about eating it and didn't buy one.

^^ I was wondering why I had never seen one here in the States!

I've had them in Mexico, the word I would use to describe it is "luscious."

Wow! That doesn't even look like a real fruit... it looks like something sculpted out of butter-creme frosting...

Mangsteen is the fruit of the gods. Unimaginably smooth sweet lusciousness. I have been looking for them in grocery stores for nearly 10 years since I ate handfulls of them in Hawaii. We found them at a roadside fruit stand on the island of Kauai and I made my guy turn around to buy the rest of them once I got a taste in the car. Oh I'm so excited that we'll be able to buy them soon!~

I sometimes buy these in the Chinatowns in NYC and Vancouver. I think lychees, and the Philippine version of the cherimoya are better value and just as delightful, but these are a nice treat once in a while and its contraband-ness adds to the mystique.

The flavor is too subtle to make into icecream... the Asian ice cream versions of mangosteens I've tasted over the years are really a lychee/jackfruit/banana mix to approximate mangosteen. All Mangosteen lovers need are a knife and a spoon!

Here's the word for "jackfruit" in three languages:


Malay: Nangka

Kapampangan: Yangka

Tagalog: Langka

I tried them first time on holidays in Bali , Indonesia , the fruit is exquisite, we started getting them now in our supermarkets, but I haven't bought them yet, I'm afraid that the magic will be lost, I want to associate them with the holidays.

That's interesting. I remember having "Mangosteen Velvet" ice cream in the Philippines years ago, which was essentially a chocolate ice cream with fruit. Maybe I'm misremembering here, but I think I recall something kind of hairy at the bottom of the container (no, not a rodent; more like a mango pit). I always assumed it was a mangosteen pit or something. I'm not sure if I've actually had just the fruit itself, but it seems like I did at some point. I recall it as smooth and creamy.