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mark4321_gw

Fresh Juice??

mark4321_gw
15 years ago

This is may be a little off topic...

At the Asian supermarkets around here they carry various brands of what is labeled passionfruit juice or syrup. The one that I've bought and liked (it's good in orange juice, in a rum and coke, etc.) is labelled Super Marquisa Juice Pohon Pinang and has "fresh juice" in the corner. The product is from Indonesia, and essentially the entire label is in, I assume, Indonesian. The ingredients listed are sugar, marquisa (passionfruit juice), sodium benzoate, food coloring, and water. I don't understand how water could be the last ingredient, even after food coloring.

It's syrupy and it smells strongly of passionfruit (almost too strongly).

Does anyone have an idea what it actually is? I don't care if it's fake--I still like it.

Comments (4)

  • passionflow
    15 years ago

    Mark
    Not all countries have regulations whereby ingredients are listed in amount order. It will be the real thing I expect. You can't beat making your own juice though from fresh fruit and a sieve.
    Myles

    Here is a link that might be useful: Passion fruit.

  • mark4321_gw
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    Myles,

    I still have to wait for my own plants to start producing--not too much longer. In the meantime, the last I managed to find a passionfruit in a store (and it was a bit of a drive) it was $35 a pound!

    I bought one fruit at that store. A couple weeks later I went back to find what I think was the same batch of fruit--except much more wrinkled. The price per pound was the same, but I believe the price per (wrinkled) fruit was significantly less. I bought one more fruit.

    Interestingly, seeds from the first fruit never germinated; those from the second did at close to 100%.

  • karyn1
    15 years ago

    I'm surprised that the fruit was so expensive. It's relatively inexpensive at the Asian markets here. It is considerably pricier at the chain grocery stores and is usually unripe or poor quality. The Safeway by me had a whole bin of ripe and over ripe edulis fruit that I knew wasn't going to sell. I'm friendly with the produce manager and asked if I could buy some fruit before they got rid of them. He told me to take the whole bin at no cost! Needless to say I ended up juicing them because there were so many. I think it tastes like Hawaiian Punch. I've already got a few edulis vines growing but did plant a sampling of the seeds to check germination and it was almost 100%.

    The passion fruit juice might not have had that much water in it if it had been reduced to a syrup. Even in American products such as canned tropical fruit they use passion fruit juice the same way they use pear and apple juice. There's actually a number of products that contain passion fruit juice. I also buy passion fruit ice cream at a Central American ice cream shop. They have all kinds of interesting ice cream flavors like annona, sapote, lychee and many others.

  • mark4321_gw
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    For some reason passion fruit is incredibly scarce around here, which is particularly strange in light of the huge Asian and Latino communities. I check periodically at the 99 Ranch Market (a monstrous Asian market)--I've never seen it. I've never seen it at any of the big chains, and I've never seen it at the farmer's market. What season is it most likely to be in stores? Even the small incredibly expensive specialty groceries don't usually carry it. The only place I've seen it was at one of these stores, and that's only because I was told to go there. If anyone knows of a place that has it (particularly with reasonable prices) in the Mountain View/Cupertino/Sunnyvale area near San Jose I would appreciate it.

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