SUNNY SIDE UP

The golden-hued egg fruit found in southern states is rich in nutritive and medicinal properties, but remains underutilised

- VIBHA VARSHNEY

FINDING A fruit one has been wanting to taste for a while—and that too, in an unexpected place—is always exciting. A while ago, a friend had told me about an “egg fruit” from the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but I had not managed to lay my hands on it. It was in Sri Lanka that the fruit found me. While travelling through the Central Province town of Nuwara Eliya, I bought a bag full of the fruits, which the vendor told me were called lavulu in the local language and were highly preferred by monkeys.

The fruits were hard and the vendor told me to wait for a few days before eating them. I curiously cut one of them, and found that the pulp was sticky and full of latex, with one large seed. It ripened after nearly a week, developing a golden-yellow colour and texture that resembled a hard-boiled egg yolk. It also gained a sweet, mild flavour and a fragrance similar to sapota or chikoo. In fact, the egg fruit or Pouteria campechiana belongs to the sapotaceae family. Like the sapota, egg fruit is native to Central America, but is now widely cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

While in Sri Lanka it is lavulu, in Tamil Nadu the fruit is called manjal sappota or mansal pazham. In a 2020 study published in the journal