Paul: Welcome to Extension Out Loud, a podcast from Cornell Cooperative Extension. Today, we're talking about the pawpaw, the largest edible fruit native to North America, with a long, and until recently, obscure history in our region. It may be native to New York, but you won't find it in most grocery stores.
And for many of us, it's a fruit that we've never even heard of. But the pawpaw has been cultivated and carried across this land for generations, long before European settlement. It's a fruit that plays by its own rules. It demands to be enjoyed fresh and at just the right moment of ripeness. To help us understand what makes the pawpaw significant, both ecologically and culturally, I'm joined by Anya Stancil, Small Fruit Extension Specialist with Harvest New York.
Why are pawpaws cool?
Anya: Pawpaws are cool because they have really unique flavor profile compared to a lot of the fruit that grows in our region. They have absolutely no acid, and they're super-duper sweet. And they, they have, like, a whole lot of aroma. They just... They get people who like to cook and play with flavors really excited.
They're beautiful trees for landscaping. They have these giant leaves that turn this kind of butter yellow color in the fall, and they host zebra swallowtail caterpillars, so they're great for our native wildlife enthusiasts. New York is just kind of their native range, and we're finding that actually the reason why there were pawpaws in New York, uh, in the first place is because indigenous peoples who lived here would carry the seeds with them on their trade routes and kind of plant them along their routes.
So they're just... They're really neat trees that have a whole bunch of history.
Paul: That's cool. So, so, like, pawpaws are kind of the indigenous Johnny Appleseed sort of story?
Anya: Yeah. Yeah, I'd say so.
Paul: That's very cool. Why don't we find pawpaws in our grocery stores on the shelves?
Anya: Pawpaws are kind of like peaches in that they're super delicate when they're ripe.
And unlike peaches, they can make you pretty sick when they're underripe. So you really have to sell them when they're dead ripe, or else, uh, quite a few people will have acute pawpaw toxicity, which presents itself as, like, vomiting
Paul: So we don't wanna encourage the overeating of pawpaws, no?
Anya: Yeah, when they're underripe, they ship beautifully, but n- don't eat them.
Paul: If somebody was looking for them, where would they be likely to find them?
Anya: There's more and more growers who have, like, a small grove of trees, and they'll sell to local stores. If you go to the internet, you can buy frozen pawpaw puree online, and you can also find, uh, processed pawpaw products like jams, chutneys, liqueurs.
Paul: When did this resurgence, you know, in interest in pawpaws start?
Anya: I think there's been a couple people really working on pawpaws for many, many years, and it sort of culminated in, like, this reemergence of pawpaws sometime around the time of the pandemic, I think, is when it really hit a head. There's a book called Pawpaw: America's Forgotten Fruit.
It was written by Andrew Moore. He did a wonderful job chronicling, like, the, the social history, the ecological history of the pawpaw. And there was this gentleman who dedicated his life to breeding pawpaws named Neil Peterson. He really picked trees that consistently make really good, really big fruit that's super sweet and tasty.
So he and the University of Kentucky have just kind of had these years and years of work done, and I think together these people kind of elevated it. And then we had celebrity chefs did some work on pawpaws too.
Paul: What do pawpaws taste like?
Anya: They're creamy, they're super sweet. They can have really different flavors.
Sometimes the flesh is white, sometimes it's yellow. The whiter flesh ones can have a little bit of bitterness to them. The yellow ones tend to just have maybe more of a tropical kind of mango-y smell to them. The flesh is kind of slippery and juicy. So people say that they taste like a cross between a mango and a banana, but they just, they taste like a pawpaw.
Paul: Of course. Is there any reason for the, the variation in flavor? Is it... Does it have anything to do with where it's grown, or is it just a matter of genetics with that particular tree?
Anya: I think genetics matter a lot. When you have pawpaws that grow in the forest in a shady place, then they tend to be smaller and drier fruits, seedier.
And when you have them in full sun, they tend to be a little bit bigger, a little bit more juicy. But genetics is the number one determinant. And you can have fruit that's as big as two baseballs held together, or you can have fruit that's the size of maybe a stretched out ping pong ball. Like-
Paul: Wow
Anya: Yeah.
Paul: That's, that's amazing. Is there anything else, any other factors you know about
Anya: pawpaws? Well, you know, they spread by rhizomes as well as by seeds.
Paul: Okay.
Anya: So they're kind of a combination of a species that's endangered in New York, like the natural areas where those groves planted by indigenous peoples are, the specific geolocations of those are actually kept secret because they're so rare here.
But at the same time, if they are planted in a spot that they really like, once they get established, they can actually be kind of invasive and just, like, make a big old grove, kind of like sumac.
Paul: Wow.
Anya: Yeah, so kind of both things in one.
Paul: So I remember reading... A couple years ago I read this book that was set down in Appalachia during the '20s or '30s, and they really hammered home, like, harvesting pawpaws w- at that particular moment when they were this perfect...
They almost described it as blackish. Is that something you should look for if you're looking for pawpaws, is the darker skin?
Anya: Right now they wouldn't sell a, a black-skinned pawpaw, just like they wouldn't sell a banana with black skin anymore. Even though, like, yes, that is a perfect peak of ripeness, but, like, you can...
It can go black in your own kitchen. Like, the stores don't-
Paul: Okay ...
Anya: have that, right? There is actually breeding being done for pawpaws to get a kind of yellowish undertone in their skin versus a kind of greener tone. When they do that, it's nice because then you can kind of have a visual indicator of ripeness instead of having to poke it.
But some varieties just stay green the whole time, and you just, you have to poke it.
Paul: Thank you for listening to this episode. Extension Out Loud was produced and edited by Paul Treadwell. For more information about this episode, including show notes and the transcript, visit extensionoutloud.com. And be sure to subscribe to Extension Out Loud on your favorite podcast directory
