Miraculin

[chattius 2,529]

I was the crash test dummy for a party performance of one of my nieces yesterday evening. They came to control the maggot cheese which is riping at our cellar and to get some dozen pounds of different sorts from our trees. She is studying acriculture/oecotrophology and came up with miracle fruits her university is growing in a glas house for testing.

 

She was preparing an evening dinner, with appetizer, main dish and dessert. While the preparation of the appetizer looked normal, the main dish surely wasn't. It was somehow strange to see that she used lot of goose berries, Speierling (she wanted them for experimenting), lemon and citrons for her normal sweet chilli recipes. It tasted strange but not too bad. And then the shock,the dessert was more or less a lemon half filled with Speierling pieces.

 

The trick was that the appetizer had some Miraculin powder in. Miraculin changes its molecular shape if it gets in contact with food acids. It glues to the taste receptors on the tongue and so sour changes into swwet. My niece said it is a party joke by her department at university to fool people from other departments. They tell them that they breeded sweet lemons and are demonstrating it by eating lemons. But they ate miraculin before while the poor people from other departments haven't and they do just the normal foolish faces if biting into a citron.

 

My niece said that doing new recipes is more complex than a simple party joke. Only the sour receptors are fooled,but eating is more than sweet, sour and salty. The aroma you smell isn't changed, so it seems to take a lot of experimenting to create a good tasting meal which is based on miraculin usage. Also the sour receptors were evolution to avoid unripe fruits with too much acid.

 

So we were discussing the possible usage of Miraculin a bit. As my niece said: it is fun to experiment with recipes,even earning some needed money while being at university. She is invited and paid to shock people at parties and restaurant events with these strange recipes. But in this case the usage is controlled. I could happily bite into a citron even 3 hours after I took the appetizer with the miraculin. So nothing I would allow for my kids.

 

I know miraculin is freely sold in Japan, while in european community it is somehow handled as a food addition and not as a fruit eaten for centuries in africa. But what usage will it have, allow to eat sour fruits in places where no other food is available.

[czevak 57]

You can buy miraculin (Miracle Fruit) tablets by 10 in a blister on the net. Also in germany. There is a lot about miracle berry parties on youtube to be found.

 

I would be interested to get a few seeds for our plant laboratory here in Neustadt a.d. Weinstraße.

 

Can you ask your niece to send some over (if she is allowed to do that)?

Edited November 14, 2011 by czevak

[chattius 2,529]

Jupp ich hab es auch weiter geleitet. Aber ich seh meine Nichte nicht so oft, studiert in Munchen. Wart noch auf Anrwort.

[gogoblender 3,071]

hey, I just saw this on Top chef two nights ago! I did a lot of reading about this as well, and it's all finally connecting! Chattius, I had to look up your post on the google search for our sites on SacredWiki, but it zeroed in on this. Now, all I wanna do is try this out. Lemons into super tasty Tangerines?

 

I wanna try!

 

 

gogo