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FOOD RESOURCE
COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

ROSE-APPLE, JAMBROSADE, ECHINOCACTUS JAMBOS, MALABAR PLUM, ROSE APPLE, SYZYGIUM MALACCENSIS

Excerpts from Passmore, Jacki. 1991. The Encyclopedia of Asian Food and Cooking. Hearst Books, New York.
the rose apple is an attractive fruit with a rose-pink, waxy skin and is about the size and shape of a small pear. Similar to an apple in taste, it has more seeds, a sweet juice and either a crisp or wooly texture. From the genus Eugenia and belonging to the myrtle family, it grows as a shrub-like tree in tropical countries; the fruit grows in clusters on the trees. There are three types of rose apple grown and used in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malayasia and Indonesia.


This resource is much more than a dictionary or encyclopedia. If you wish to know more about cuisines and associated recipes from individual countries, this would be an excellent resource.
Ward, Artemas. 1923. The Encyclopedia of Food. New York, Number Fifty, Union Square.
is a fragrant fruit of two East Indian trees grown in California for their beautiful flowers and foliage. The fruit of one species is pear-shaped, one to two inches in maximum diameter, whitish or yellowish tinged with pink and rose-flavored. It is insipid to the palate as a raw fruit, and over-dry, but is popular in the tropics as made into jelly, preserves, and confectionery. The fruit of the other tree is larger, red of skin, and inclined to egg-shape. It tastes a good deal like an apple.
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of tropical eastern Asia. The tree is cultivated in many parts of India for its fruit, which is of the size of a small apple, with a delicate, rose-water perfume but dry and hardly worth eating. It can hardly be considered eatable, being of a poor flavor and of a dry, pithy consistency but is made into preserves. The tree was introduced into Jamaica in 1762. The rind, says Lunan, has a sweetish, watery taste, with a flavor like roses but it is not in much esteem as a fruit. It was introduced into Florida by C. Codrington, Jacksonville, before 1877.

ECHINOCACTUS MALACCENSIS, JAMBOS, LARGE-FRUITED ROSE APPLE, MALAY APPLE, ROSE APPLE

is a tree of the Moluccas, cultivated in the Indian Archipelago, Pacific islands, China and India. "The fruit," says Capt. Cook, at Batavia, "is of a deep red color and an oval shape; the largest, which are always the best, are not bigger than a small apple; they are pleasant and cooling, though they have not much flavor." Rheede says the fruit is of the size and shape of a moderate pear, white with a blush of red, of a very agreeable, vinous taste and smell. firminger says the fruit is of the size and form of a very small apple, eprfectly smooth, of a pure, translucent white, with a beautiful blush of cromson and that some persons eat it but it is not worth eating. Seemann says that it is quince-shaped, with an apple-like smell and delicate flavor. In 1839, a speciment of the fruit grown under glass at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was exhibited at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's exhibition and the fruit was pronounced most delicious, partaking of the fragrance of the rose with the sweetness of the peach. The floers are preserved by the Dutch at Amboina and are frequently eaten as a salad.


http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/rose_apple.html Purdue University. Accessed July 2007.
Like many other fruits to which the word "apple" has been attached, the rose apple in no way resembles an apple, neither in the tree nor in its fruit. It is a member of the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, and is technically known as Syzygium jambos Alston (syn. Eugenia jambos L.; Jambosa jambos Millsp.; Jambosa vulgaris DC.; Caryophyllus jambos Stokes ).

The term "rose apple" (in French, pomme rose, pommier rose; in Spanish, poma rosa, pomarrosa, manzana rosa, or manzanita de rosa

) is so widely employed that the species has few alternate names apart from those in the many local dialects of Africa, India, Malaya, southeastern Asia, the East Indies and Oceania. It is sometimes called jambosier by French-speaking people, plum rose or malabar plum in the English-speaking West Indies, pommeroos or appelroos in Surinam, and jambeiro or jambo amarelo in Brazil; jaman in India, and yambo in the Philippines.

Description
The rose apple tree may be merely a shrub but is generally a tree reaching 25 or even 40 ft (7.5-12 m) in height, and has a dense crown of slender, wide-spreading branches, often the overall width exceeding the height. The evergreen leaves are opposite, lanceolate or narrow-elliptic, tapering to a point; 4 to 9 in (10-22 cm) long, and from 1 to 2 1/2 in (2.5-6.25 cm) wide; somewhat leathery, glossy, dark-green when mature, rosy when young. The flowers are creamy-white or greenish-white, 2 to 4 in (5-10 cm) wide, consisting mostly of about 300 conspicuous stamens to 1 1/2 in (4 cm) long, a 4-lobed calyx, and 4 greenish-white, concave petals. There are usually 4 or 5 flowers together in terminal clusters. Capped with the prominent, green, tough calyx, the fruit is nearly round, oval, or slightly pear-shaped, 1 1/2 to 2 in (4-5 cm) long, with smooth, thin, pale-yellow or whitish skin, sometimes pink-blushed, covering a crisp, mealy, dry to juicy layer of yellowish flesh, sweet and resembling the scent of a rose in flavor. In the hollow center, there are 1 to 4 brown, rough-coated, medium-hard, more or less rounded seeds, 3/8 to 5/8 in (1-1.6 cm) thick, which loosen from the inner wall and rattle when the fruit is shaken. Fragments of the seedcoat may be found in the cavity.

Origin and Distribution
The rose apple is native to the East Indies and Malaya and is cultivated and naturalized in many parts of India, Ceylon and former Indochina and the Pacific Islands. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1762 and became well distributed in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the West Indies and, at low and medium elevations, from southern Mexico to Peru. In Guatemala, the tree may be planted as a living fencepost or in hedgerows around coffee plantations. For this purpose, it is drastically pruned to promote dense growth. It grows wild abundantly, forming solid stands and thickets, in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

In 1825, eight young trees were taken from Rio de Janeiro to Hawaii by ship, and, in 1853, a United States warship delivered avocado and rose apple trees from Central America to the island of Hilo. The rose apple became naturalized on the islands of Kauai, Molokai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii. In 1893, it was reported as already cultivated in Ghana. It is semi-naturalized in some areas of West Tropical Africa and on the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Reunion. It is believed to have been first planted in Queensland, Australia, about 1896. A tree obtained from an Italian nursery has grown and borne well on the coastal plain of Israel. However, it is not of interest there as a fruit tree but rather as an ornamental.

The rose apple was introduced into Florida, at Jacksonville, before 1877, but, as a fruit tree, it is suited only to the central and southern parts of the state. In California, it is planted as far north as San Francisco for its ornamental foliage and flowers. Because the tree occupies considerable space and the fruit is little valued, the rose apple has not been planted in Florida in recent years, though there are quite a number of specimens remaining from former times.

< Food Value Per 100 g of Edible Portion*

Calories 56
Moisture 84.5-89.1 g
Protein 0.5-0.7 g
Fat 0.2-0.3 g
Carbohydrates 14.2 g
Fiber 1.1-1.9 g
Ash 0.4-0.44 g
Calcium 29-45.2 mg
Magnesium 4 mg
Phosphorus 11.7-30 mg
Iron 0.45-1.2 mg
Sodium 34.1 mg
Potassium 50 mg
Copper 0.01 mg
Sulfur 13 mg
Chlorine 4 mg
Carotene 123-235 I.U.
Thiamine 0.01-0.19 mg
Riboflavin 0.028-0.05 mg
Niacin 0.521-0.8 mg
Ascorbic Acid 3-37 mg

*Analyses made in Central America and elsewhere.


Thailand Fruit: ROSE APPLE is a bell-shaped fruit similar to the apple, though not as tart. You'll see it in green or pink.


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Compiled for Food Resource http://food.oregonstate.edu