Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The melon-lemon

On April 1st I told you about the gin and tonic trees growing here in Bigastro. I explained that the fruit were obtained by ripening a crossing of lemon and quince. That was my "April Fools " joke. This fruit however is for real.

The English supermarket Tesco are going to market a new melon which has been grown for them here in Murcia. What they wanted was a fruit with the characteristic flavour of lemon but much larger.

The 'melon-lemon' is similar to a honeydew with a greenish yellow skin but with the sharper flavour of lemon. The fruit , which is the result of 12 years of experiments, was produced by crossing the bitter white melon from India with the Japanese wild melon.

The melon-lemon has between 700 and 800 milligrams of citric acid per 100 grams of pulp giving it the sharp taste that Tesco wanted.

Tesco expects consumers to use the new melon as a starter with salad or with prawns.

Actually we've had lemons on our trees almost the size of melons. Tesco could have saved a lot of time by just coming round to our house.

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