Pomplemouse

Pomplemouse! Some of you may be unfamiliar with this French named fruit. So I will tell you. It is a grapefruit, but not the regular kind that you may have tried, that sour little fruit that you buy weeks after it was picked in a grocery store. It’s so sour that sometimes your Mom serves it with a little brown sugar on top. Well, that is not a Marquesian pomplemouse, that is something completely different. I don’t even know why it shares the same English name.

After eating pomplemouse, I don’t think I can ever go back.

So what is a pomplemouse? Let’s start from the beginning. It is grown from a little seed, in someone’s backyard in the Marquesas where the volcanic soil is rich in nutrients. When the seed becomes a tree, it will give off more seeds through a fruit. Picture it! A giant fruit that is as big as a basketball, round and green in its full majestic strength.

When you cut it open, you’ll find a springy, pungent inner skin which puffs overpowering citrus spray into the air. Once you pull all that out, you’ll find the treasure. Put the uncovered slice in your mouth, and taste the sweet pulp. It’s sweet, but not too sweet and each bite squirts juice into your mouth.

My favorite fruit used to be pineapples and apples, but now the incredibly delicious pomplemouse wins hands down! I think everyone needs to travel all the way to the Marquesas just for pomplemouse.

Speaking of traveling, our magnificent pomplemouse was probably brought here by some old boat around the time of Captain Cook. Presumably, the regular grapefruit came over and evolved into the bigger, better, fruit.

Pomplemouse! I wish I could eat one every day, but now we’re in the Tuomotos, 500 miles away from the pomplemouse.

The end.