The Appeal of Exotic Fruits
By Kimberly J. Decker

Although the United States might be a nation of trendsetters in music, movies and fashion sense, Americans are shockingly behind the curve when it comes to tastes in fruit. "The average person thinks that there are only 20 or 30 different fruits and vegetables," says Robert Schueller, assistant marketing director, Melissa's World Variety Produce, Los Angeles, who marvels that despite the thousands of produce items available, "we continue just to scratch the surface on the possibilities of different fruit varieties out there."

Some of us, however, are already digging deeper. Even at a measly 2 lbs. per person, U.S. mango consumption has nearly doubled in the past 10 years. And as the fruit's profile rises, so does the value of mango-flavored anything, from nectars and yogurts to smoothies, salsas and sorbets. But turning an exotic fruit into a household name isn't a simple matter of plucking it from its tree. The mango's celebrity is by no means a foregone conclusion for the countless other exotic fruits awaiting their triumph. While a heightened interest in unusual fruit offers manufacturers a fresh product-development opportunity, it takes value-added ingredients and a little help from flavor technology (to make those foreign fruits downright domestic).

What is exotic
With piles of apples, pears and bananas still dominating supermarket produce sections, the temptation might be to write off the American palate as intransigently incurious. But lest we pass judgment too quickly, recall that once even a banana offered a taste of adventure. Same for that other erstwhile tropical novelty, the pineapple. When it comes to just what passes for exotic, says Chris Rollins, park manager and naturalist, Fruit & Spice Park, Homestead, FL: "It's changed a lot. We're really making great progress in the small amount of time that Americans have been willing to accept anything new. And our great melting pot is really bringing in a lot of these fruits, too."

Take the pacaya, a delicacy whose popularity among South Florida's Central American community has given it a toehold in the States. The unopened flower shoot of a palm tree that grows in the jungle understory, the pacaya now appears in cans and jars on Miami grocery shelves. "It is so obscure that you've pretty much got to be from Central America to know what it is and what to do with it," says Rollins. "And yet we've got enough of that population here to create the market."

A similar introduction has boosted the profiles of fruits such as the lychee and lulo -- an Andean cousin of the tomato used in sorbets and beverages. And while these might still be unimaginable to most consumers raised on Red Delicious apples, they're the stuff of sweet memories to U.S. citizens of more recent vintage. As Kevin Riley, technical director of the sweet flavor category, Mastertaste, Teterboro, NJ, says: "Calling a fruit 'exotic' is generally based on consumer perception." And consumer perception is a product of America's fluid demographics. "Technically, pineapples, bananas and kiwi were once exotic fruits, but consumers now consider them to be more mainstream," he says. What's more, "the Hispanic population, which has grown up consuming their native fruits, would not consider a mango exotic, while a person who has grown up in the U.S. may," he concludes.

Illustrating the slippery nature of "exotic," Emmanuel LaRoche, flavors marketing manager, Symrise, Teterboro, NJ, consulted colleagues around the globe on which "exotic" fruits stand out with their compatriots. "And it's very interesting to look at their answers," he says. Among the "exotics" an Australian associate cited as popular was, of all things, watermelon. "Of course, they have mango and passion fruit, too, but watermelon is on the list, and watermelon is not exotic for us at all," he says. Meanwhile, "mainstream" fruits in Singapore include lychee, mangosteen, jackfruit and carambola -- precisely the fruits that U.S. consumers have only begun to discover, let alone embrace.

The next new thing
As perceptions change and Americans grow numb to a pineapple or Pluot's novelty, consumers can't hop to the next new fruit fast enough. "Even when you look at items like mango or passion fruit," says Don Giampetro, vice president, sales, iTi tropicals, Lawrenceville, NJ, "they've come to the point where, although I wouldn't classify them as mainstream, I also wouldn't classify them as new and upcoming, because they are more well-established and recognized now, and I think that there are so many other new products out there."

All those new fruits merely quench Americans' thirst for dining drama, observes Jack Fastag, flavor chemist, David Michael & Co., Inc., Philadelphia. "I think that there's a thrill component to food today," he says. "There's an element of theater to the food experience. And I think exotic fruits fit that very well, because they're part of that theater: It's thrilling. It's about taking a risk."

It also exemplifies the phenomenon of "trading up," our aspirational habit of injecting luxury into life's most-mundane corners -- even the fruit bin. By choosing an exotic fruit, consumers both affirm their progressive palates and display the confidence to give a breakout item a chance. "When you're in the supermarket and you buy a product because you somehow know about it, it almost puts you on another level with a more-upscale category of the population," notes LaRoche. It's the mango as status symbol.

Five a day, the tropical way
As an added bonus, a cosmopolitan fruit fetish contributes to a clean bill of health. "Now is a great time to introduce exotic fruits because many contain naturally high levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, which relate to the health and wellness trend. Fruit consumption in general continues to increase as consumers are looking to maintain a healthy diet," says Riley. And because exotic fruits package these advantages in "indulgent appeal," he adds, "Exotic fruits, as a healthy alternative to a sugary, unhealthy dessert, are looked at as indulgent and perceived to be gourmet."

Salubrious associations have breathed life into fruits that, from a public-relations standpoint, had been dying on the vine. Such was the spark that propelled antioxidant-rich pomegranate out of obscurity and into trendy lounges, juice bars and magazines. The same fate might await the açai berry, a seedy little "superfood" harvested from the crowns of palm trees in the Amazonian rain forest. With more antioxidants than red wine and a portfolio of essential amino acids to rival the egg's -- not to mention a sprightly berry flavor with undertones of chocolate -- açai has found favor in North America as a smoothie staple. "That is a very popular fruit," LaRoche says. "Now you can find it even in the Jamba Juice chain, where you can have your açai mixed into your smoothie."

You couldn't ask for a fruit with a better back story. With its themes of jungle adventure and the romantic sublime, açai has assumed the guise of a fruit rescued by sustainably minded activist-entrepreneurs. Indeed, LaRoche muses, the entire exotic fruit trend "has to be considered, not only with the health aspects, but with all the mystery and mystical atmosphere and powerful names that these fruits have. A company will go with a fruit if there's a good story behind it that will introduce the functional benefits, like the pomegranate or the açai. Then you have something to give your consumer."

Supply and demand
The only problem is that companies sometimes have to initiate a global search mission to find enough of a fruit to make it a going concern. "There are some wonderful fruits out there that have a dismal future in terms of commerce," says Rollins.

"Is there a market for it? Can you guarantee supply? All of those things come into play," when considering adding a new fruit to a lineup, says Giampetro. Obviously, without a market, it would little suit the processor's interests to hunt a fruit down.

But, observes Rollins: "The old catch-22 is that if you don't have enough of something, it's very hard to market it, no matter how good it is. And no one's going to grow enough of it unless they already have a market. So someone has to take a gamble somewhere."

It's not an easy decision to make. "I had somebody approach me for an item called borojo," Giampetro says, referring to a native fruit of the western Amazon basin that's prized in Colombia and Panama for its alleged Viagralike qualities. "A number of things come into play," he says. "One is the market. If a flavor house approaches us and says, 'I've got a customer looking for borojo and, by the way, I'm going to buy five pails of it for a year,' how do you support that? But if you do have a market -- if somebody says, 'Hey, I'm going to buy two container-loads, minimum, and it's potentially going to grow'-- then we go out and source the product."

Even more important is supply. "If your market wants it and you can't supply it," Giampetro says, "it doesn't matter whether there's a big-enough market or not. Your supply side has to be strong; if not, you're going to have a very tough time supporting your business." And to an almost maddening degree, the supply of tropical and exotic fruits is subject to seasonality. He points to the mango as a classic example. "We source probably about eight or nine different varieties," he says. "But with each variety, you probably only have about six to eight weeks to produce the product in a season. So the processor has to be there, ready to produce when the product is ripe."

Stopping the clock at the right time makes all the difference with individually quick-frozen fruits. "We source a lot of IQF tropical fruits," Giampetro continues, "whether it's simple things like pineapple or guava, mango, or papaya. These items are used a lot in salsa products or wherever you want texture or piece integrity. So when you talk about ripeness, that becomes critical because if the product is too ripe, you can't cut it and maintain a proper square; if it's not ripe enough, it tastes like a piece of wood."

Processors and growers traditionally harvest fruits prior to full ripeness as a hedge against transit damage. But according to Schueller, the compromise stymies the spread of tropical and exotic fruits. Early-harvested fruits, "don't sweeten up to the levels you would wish for when they're vine ripened," he says.

But even warp-speed distribution can't keep up with some fast-ripening fruits. "There are fruits that simply don't ship well, and that's a very serious problem," says Rollins.

Such is the case with a distant citrus relative from Central America called the white sapote, which Rollins says is "just a wonderful fruit. It tastes like vanilla custard. I love picking them in the middle of the day when the sun has warmed them." Even though companies can now source white sapotes from growers as close as Southern California and South Florida, "when it ripens, the skin gets so soft that you can't pick it up without the skin just sloughing off in your fingers," he says. And you can't pick it ahead of time, either, or it won't ripen. "When you do pick it," he says, "you've got about a day before it turns to mush. So it's pretty discouraging," although he holds out hope that research will yield thicker-skinned cultivars.

At the source
For these and other reasons, Giampetro says, quality of supply "is one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of exotic-fruit sourcing." The lesson, then, is that the more you know your source, the better your product will be. "We have relationships with the same particular processor of banana and passion fruit, for example, that go back 18 years," he says, and that's given his company sufficient time to establish confidence in their performance.

So what should a supplier be watching? For one, Giampetro says: "Processors have to know what's going on in terms of how ripe the product has to be, if there's a problem with harvest, the specific farm the fruit came from, the pesticide use." Details become even more important regarding a number of emerging exotic fruits. Açai, he notes, "is grown in very uncontrolled conditions on the banks of the Amazon River. Finding a plant that can produce a product safely is not an easy task. And then when someone requires a significant volume it adds a further challenge and difficulty to the situation at hand." So, when sourcing a new fruit, Giampetro turns first to the growers in what has become his company's extended family. "That, logically, is the easier way for us to go about it," he notes. If the company needs to tap a new supplier however, "all the quality parameters have to be in place for this processor to supply the U.S. market. And that's very difficult today, when you look at making sure that their HACCP and GMPs are in place, and that their third-party audits are there," he says. FDA requires that low-acid foods -- banana, papaya, coconut -- bear a "food canning establishment" number, for example. "If they do not have that," he says, "and the processor in Ecuador or Indonesia indeed may not, then when the product comes into the port at Miami, for example, or New York, customs will stop it and turn it back."

The interminable war on terror only raises the stakes. "With terror activity and border patrol, it's really gotten more difficult," Giampetro says. "But I really think that, based on the relationships we have with our processors over the years, we're in a very safe situation." Such implicit trust has prompted his company to enter into the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or CTPAT, which documents the safety records of overseas suppliers in an effort to expedite importation. "I understand that we have a job to do, and we have a public to protect," he says.

Opening doors
Inevitably, though, some exotic fruits will remain permanent curiosities. Schueller offers the monstera as an example. "I don't think that fruit will ever work," he says. "We did carry monstera a few years back and gave it a try, but it's just too weird." About a foot long and covered in green hexagonal scales known as "tiles," the monstera tells people when it's ready to be eaten by sloughing, or in some cases popping, the tiles right off its body. "You can't just break it open and eat it," he says. "It definitely is a unique fruit experience." But its viability as a manufacturing ingredient looks unlikely.

More's the pity, because if someone could get their hands on one and wait for its tiles to drop away, it'd be a genuine treat. With a profile mingling banana, mango, pineapple, and, per Melissa's World Variety Produce literature, "apple pie" flavors, monstera pulp would be a shoe-in for smoothies, ice creams, custards and beverages. But who'd risk formulating with an exploding fruit? "There are companies out there that don't want to take that risk," says Schueller.

As in Hollywood or on Broadway, if a fruit doesn't promise blockbuster returns, it's just too much of a gamble. "And when companies notice that the pulp is three times as expensive as strawberries, and strawberry is a great seller," he continues, "why would they take a chance?" The same reluctance plagues consumers. "It's just a matter of the customer saying, 'Well, should I take a chance and try the cherimoya yogurt, or should I continue with my strawberry flavor?'"

The secret ingredients
A consumer's introduction to exotics like cherimoya or even monstera usually comes through exposure to the fruit itself. As Giampetro says, the popularity of the fresh fruit, for the most part, "dictates where people are going to go with the juice or the processed product." If the fruit is lucky, a positive response will usher it from the produce bin to product development. But this traditional arc of familiarity needlessly consigns many potential sensations -- fruits that just happen to be too rare, delicate, or unwieldy to market -- to permanent outsider status.

In fact, if a fruit were to travel the arc in reverse -- couching its novelty first in the comfort of a familiar food -- it might generate a critical mass of demand to sustain its success. "If you can get people used to the taste in a way that's not highly perishable and your investment isn't as risky," Rollins says, "once they know the fruit, then you stand at least a better chance of trying to market it fresh later on."

Again, it comes down to how much risk a manufacturer can stomach. The factors weighing into that calculation are complex and unique to each manufacturer and fruit. But if the mounting buzz about, say, mangosteen, dragon fruit, or capuaçu convinces a company to give the item a go, ingredients are increasingly coming on line to help get the ball rolling.

In fact, because a beverage or yogurt by its nature is a processed food made with processed ingredients, the perils that attend formulating with fresh exotics don't apply. Using value-added, processed-fruit ingredients not only eliminates perishability concerns but eases importation if the fruit comes from overseas, as well. Processed-fruit ingredients are always easier to bring into the United States, Schueller says, because "there is no possibility of any little buggies or pests" hitching a ride.

Frozen pulps, purées, juices and concentrates are probably the most common forms in which to find processed exotic-fruit ingredients. "Freezing can help you cover more markets over a longer period of time," Rollins says. "Several tropical fruits are frozen and their pulp is shipped out." He's noticed wide availability of frozen mamey sapote pulp, "and it really lends itself to desserts and milkshakes. Guanabana, or soursop, is another one that's common in frozen pulp," he adds. "And I still think people don't appreciate how exotic and tropical and unique that flavor is. It makes spectacular ice creams, daiquiris, milkshakes."

IQF technology has brought several exotic fruits within reach of product applications like salsas, salads and sauces. They're also hot commodities at smoothie bars where customers watch "baristas" scoop chunks of coconut, guava and mango into the blender while making their drinks. But Giampetro urges caution when formulating with IQF fruits. "They're the only products we handle that are not further heat-treated or pasteurized," he says. Such treatments destroy piece integrity. Manufacturers using the products in their own formulations thus have to supply the final kill step, throwing into question the wisdom of using the products in fresh smoothie applications.

Most value-added exotic-fruit ingredients sidestep this problem through pasteurization. However, "to this day, we still have people, who from time to time, request a non-pasteurized product. And that's a real potential problem. If you're bringing fruit into the United States, and you know that the processor is going to pasteurize it further, that's fine," Giampetro says. But if the processor doesn't, and someone ends up getting sick, who's liable? "That's not worth taking the risk," he says. "We bring in all pasteurized products that meet the five-log microbial reduction required by HACCP."

That includes aseptic purées and concentrates that, Giampetro believes "have been a big factor" in expanding the exotic fruit market. When it comes to convenience, "you can't beat aseptic. You don't have to refrigerate it; you can open the drum or the box and pour it in; you don't have to thaw it out," he adds. But the quality wasn't always up to snuff until recently, he states: "When these products first started coming into the United States many years ago, they were basically frozen and probably weren't even pasteurized. Then eventually they were pasteurized and frozen and then later these products were aseptically packed. Because of the aseptic packaging the quality of the product suffered because of the extra processing. Overtime, because of the technological advances in aseptic processing and packaging, we actually now make aseptic products that are extremely good. In most cases, as good as their frozen counterparts."

Even so, good luck trying to find sufficient aseptically processed feijoa purée or IQF breadfruit chunks to support even modest production runs of a nationally distributed ice cream or marinade. Even with access to convenient fruit ingredients, formulating with the fruit itself sometimes just isn't in the stars. In those cases, exotic-fruit flavors offer an alternative that can even improve upon the original.

Just ask anyone who's ever eaten durian. This thorn-bedecked, football-sized Southeast Asian fruit has a honeyed flavor and velvety texture that devotees swear is heavenly. But to get a taste, one must first wade through its stink -- a miasma of rot that cookbook author Bruce Cost likens to "eating custard in a sewer." A degree of barnyard taint haunts the profile of many exotic fruits, even up-and-comers like papaya and mango, notes Jack Fastag, flavor chemist, David Michael & Co., Inc., Philadelphia. "A lot of tropical fruits have cheesy, sulfuric, or gassy notes," he says. "And I think that's sometimes what the barrier is: People are not used to some of these notes in fruits."

That's where the flavor chemist can nip and tuck an exotic's profile better to suit the American palate. "Any exotic fruit flavor with an 'odd' flavor or aroma profile can be altered to be more appealing," notes Riley. But flavorists can't just trim the riper notes from a true-to-mango flavor and assume that consumers will be none the wiser. An aroma a chemist finds outright offensive might be the fruit's defining element in another culture. "If we're developing a mango beverage for a Latino manufacturer," Fastag says, "then it has to be very authentic or otherwise the people who grew up with it will not want it."

Nevertheless, flavor chemists enjoy the flexibility in tailoring exotic fruit flavors to the American market that mainstream fruits don't allow. "The U.S. consumer knows exactly what a strawberry, blueberry, orange or pear is," LaRoche says. "And when you create a flavor that mimics these fruits, whether it is natural or artificial, there is really a very specific expectation from consumers." In contrast, "people don't know exactly what a dragon fruit or a longan berry or kaffir lime tastes like. So this presents a very interesting situation for a flavorist: Whenever we develop an exotic fruit flavor to match an idea of what dragon fruit or pomelo is, first, we need to have a consensus on does it taste good, does it remind you of a pomelo or dragon fruit. But it doesn't have to be as characteristic as a strawberry, blueberry, or pineapple," he says.

Flavorists can also make an exotic-fruit profile easier to swallow by blending it with fruit notes that consumers already accept. "Most of the time," Riley says, "exotic fruits are slowly introduced to the consumer as blends with other more common fruits." Once the new flavor catches on, "more dominant flavor introductions are made," he adds. Recall that kiwi, somewhat bland on its own, rode in on the back of strawberry, and mango often got its foot in the door with the help of apricot. He suggests blending exotics with common fruits that are more familiar in taste and texture -- apple, grape, orange, strawberry and pineapple -- to "mellow" the exotic and gently introduce its name and characteristics. He points to açai, blood orange, lychee, and mangosteen as varieties that are already profiting from this strategy. "These flavors have the potential to become more mainstream as consumers open their taste buds," he says.

Most flavorists agree that the industry's technology and know-how can produce any exotic fruit flavor -- or a slight manipulation thereof -- that a product developer could want. But that doesn't mean it's easy. "Tropical-juice notes are usually imparted by trace quantities of sulfur molecules, which are easily destroyed by exposure to air and to heat," says Brian Grainger, director of flavor creations, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., Dayton, NJ. "Contact with air and with heat will often reduce the fresh tropical notes of many fruits." This renders yogurt, sauces, candy and any application processed with heat, trickier to flavor.

Sometimes just getting the flavor out of the fruit is tricky enough. For one thing, raw materials access, crop limits, distribution woes and other constraints limit the amount of fruit from which flavorists can make extractions -- and don't even mention sourcing fruit for organic flavors. Thus, Grainger says: "Flavors derived from the named fruit alone -- so-called FTNF -- usually are rather difficult to produce and can be expensive in use." In those cases, artificial or N&A flavors usually give the flavorist "more opportunity to create an authentic-tasting flavor," he says. "However, the availability of natural flavoring materials is growing steadily, allowing the flavorist the ability to create better WONF (with other natural flavor) flavors."

Riley adds: "In order to make characteristic flavor systems, the composition of the fruit has to be analyzed and understood to replicate to the composition and critical component ratios that are present in the exotic fruit itself." To create the right tonality, he continues, "the composition and characterizing component ratios have to be correct."

Furthermore, the chemical separation process can throw tonality off balance, due to the fruit's highly reactive and sensitive composition. Even though the key drivers of flavor profile can be in very low concentration in the fruit, he says, "there is also a low flavor and aroma threshold for many of the key components."

Adding exotic fruits to products
As if deciding on which types of exotic fruits to welcome into a product lineup weren't complex enough, product designers also have to figure out what they're going to do with it. Fortunately, "exotic fruits carry well in dairy products, such as yogurt and ice cream; beverages like tea, juice, water and flavored milk; sorbets; sauces such as chutney, salsa and marinades; and confectionary applications," says Riley.

When looking at the progression that most exotic fruits make as they work their way into manufactured products, their first stop is usually in beverages. Fastag posits that this is because a fruit beverage is "the closest you get to opening up the fruit," and squeezing out the juice yourself. "Psychologically," he says, "it feels closer to the original fruit."

After a fruit has established itself in a liquid medium, the second-most-common application, "would be yogurts and dairy. And then you have sugar confectionery, and then cereal and cereal bars," says LaRoche. This product development pattern, he adds, is fairly consistent from Australia, China, and Singapore to Mexico, Brazil and Europe.

Because exotic fruits can display flavor profiles ranging from light and delicate to almost overwhelmingly ripe, "dairy, beverage, confectionary and sauce applications may require different variations of the same exotic fruit," Riley says. "Sauces generally have a true-to-fruit taste while confectionaries taste sugary and artificial." The application will also steer a formulator toward natural, artificial, N&A, WONF, or from-the-named-fruit flavor ingredients. "The flavor must be formulated to survive the processing elements it's subjected to upon application," he says. "For example, when a flavor is being used in a hard-candy application, it must be formulated to withstand thermal abuse inherent in the manufacturing process." But because it's tough to generalize about an exotic fruit flavor's processing tolerance, it's always wise to keep your flavor supplier's tech services number handy.

The coming harvest
So which fruit flavors are ripe for picking? Cherimoya, feijoa and passion fruit look about ready for harvest, but experts have their eyes on some sleepers that, with time, might make a name for themselves, as well. These include rambutan, longan, mangosteen, mamey sapote, and -- causing quite a stir already -- dragon fruit. "It's a huge fruit in Asia now," Rollins says. "A few years ago, it was only in Vietnam as a commercial fruit. But now it's everywhere in tropical Asia, and in other parts of the world: Israel's growing it, Australia's growing it, no doubt South Africa. And we're trying to grow it in California." The flavor itself actually strikes many who've tried it as underwhelming, but the almost luminescent, magenta flesh seems to compensate. "We eat with our eyes," he points out. "And the dragon fruit is such a beautiful and compelling and unusual thing, I don't think there's any stopping it at this point."

Lychee is also making news, and it might be only a matter of time before it gets as much play as mango, kiwi and its exotic predecessors. With its soft flesh, good shelf life and a floral character that Grainger describes as "like a Gewurztraminer wine concentrated 10 times," he says, "we are beginning to see lychee beverages on the market. So maybe this one will go mainstream."

Tom Fraker, corporate chef, Melissa's World Variety Produce, is bullish on tamarillo, a golden-red, egg-shaped fruit that does double-duty in sweet and savory applications, such as the sweet-tangy mango-tamarillo barbecue sauce he developed. The fruit, he adds, has the advantage of being easy to work with. "You use it just as if you were doing a tomato concassé: Just score the bottom of it and drop it in some hot water, and once you pull it out, you just peel the skin back and use the inside," he says.
And what's next for the mango now that it's almost as domestic as the kiwi? "One thing I think we'll be seeing more of is more specific varieties of mangos," Fastag says. "There are so many different types and sizes, and they all taste different and have different characteristics." And now that we're familiar with "regular" mango, he adds, "it's very easy to introduce, say, a petacón-type mango, or the Champagne mango."

Source: Kimberly J. Decker, a California-based technical writer, has a B.S. in Consumer Food Science with a minor in English from the University of California, Davis. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she enjoys eating and writing about food. You can reach her at kim@decker.net.