By: Judy Davie - The Food Coach
What's a papple?
A papple is less obvious than it sounds. Despite looking like a small to medium-sized apple, the fruit is actually a hybrid of European and Asian pears. A papple is round with a red-orange blush over a yellow background. The ivory-coloured flesh is firm, crisp, moist, and dense, encasing a small central core with tiny black-brown seeds. When ripe, Papple pears are crunchy, juicy, and sweet with a floral aroma.
Papple pears were developed in New Zealand under the name PremP109. In Singapore, they are known as the Sunshine pear which frankly, I think is much better than the name papple first coined by well-known retailer Marks and Spencer. While selling the unnamed variety, they decided the pear's name should be a play on the pear's similarity in appearance and texture to an apple, but with the flavour of a pear. The nickname Papple appealed to their customers and the name has stuck. Let's all call it the sunshine pear.
Oliver Thring in an article written for the Guardian describes his first taste test of the papple like this:
Since you expect the taste and texture of an apple, you bite rather harder than is necessary. The flesh is much less tart than an apple, its sweetness is almost overpowering. It's also far juicier, so you end up having to glamorously chomp and suck your way through it as though it were a particularly wet burrito. For all that, it is a tasty, refreshing fruit.
So that's about all you need to know about this ridiculously named hybrid fruit. Don't be put off that it's a hybrid. Many fruits that we enjoy today, are either natural or intentional hybrids. It all comes down to the taste and you'll have to try them for yourself to see if you like them.
Piqa Boo
Another new pear to emerge on the Australian marketplace, the Piqa Boo has an equally ridiculous name as the papple, nonetheless, it is a stunning fruit.
Developed by Freshmax Group, the Piqa Boo pear combines characteristics from European, Japanese and Chinese pears, giving the fruit a distinctively crisp, juicy texture and refreshing flavour.
There's not much to find about the nutritional value of these fruits however I'd hazard a guess from the flaming red coloured skin that it's a good source of phytochemicals and probably like most other pears will offer fibre and some vitamin C as well.
All that's left to do is to do now is try them.
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