simply cut criss-cross and eaten cold

October 23, 2022 9:47 AM

Before 1976, mangoes were commercially neglected because of its erratic fruiting habit. Am still looking for confirmation that half of the mango supply [in the Philippines] comes from backyard growers, defined as those who own five to 20 fruit-bearing trees.
posted by spamandkimchi (20 comments total)

Fascinating. Note this is all about the good kind of mango, not the red-yellow-green Tommy Atkins we get by default, in the US.
posted by Rash at 10:21 AM on October 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

True anecdata: As a midwest child throughout the 60s, at least according to the signage in grocery stores and all the adults I knew, a “mango” was a green bell pepper. I have no idea when, exactly, that nonsense changed, but I know it wasn’t that way by the time I hit high school.

I never saw an actual mango in a store until sometime in the 80s.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:56 AM on October 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

I love those dried mangoes! But I can’t buy them because I literally can’t stop myself from eating the WHOLE BAG in one sitting, which inevitably leads to a significant and long-lasting gastrointestinal retribution. These days, I mostly stick to an occasional mango lassi to from the local curry eatery.
posted by Doleful Creature at 12:18 PM on October 23, 2022 [5 favorites]

IMHO, not true. India sent a LOT of mangos to England for coronation of King George VI back in 1937, which suggests mangos were already available commercially then, and probably much earlier, just not very popular in the "West". (This newsletter is full of other little factoids about mangos in general as well)

And if you want to go really historic, Dutch introduced mango trees to Taiwan back in the 17th century, transplanting them from Indonesia, obviously for profit and harvest. Dutch East India Company had an extensive outpost in Taiwan in the form of Fort Zeelandia. I remember reading somewhere that Dutch East India Company made a LOT of money off Taiwan (or as they called it back then, Taioan) then, and mango was likely a part of it.
posted by kschang at 1:19 PM on October 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

I love mangoes! I've had the pleasure of being in Mali during mango season; there were piles of small, sweet, yellow mangoes by the side of the road in some places. Those were excellent and I ate at least one every day. Mmm, mangoes.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:38 PM on October 23, 2022

One of the few truly transcendent food experiences I ever had was the first time I had a perfectly ripe ataulfo mango.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:38 PM on October 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

For a while I used to steal mangoes from people's backyards in suburban Brisbane. Because I was starving - that's a whole different story. The trees are tall, you can't reach up and pick them, you have to climb. And you won't be alone. Possums aren't a problem, they'll get out of your way.

It's the flying foxes. They're bats about the size of cats, with a wingspan of five feet. They're perhaps the biggest bats in the world and they fucking love mangoes. They only come out at night, which is when I was was stealing them. They don't attack you, but they appear out of the darkness grabbing a branch with their feet and flapping their huge wings. It's startling enough that you'll fall out of the tree.

The most dangerous thing about them are the diseases they carry. If you find a mango that's already been chewed on - it's no good. There's a virus called Hendra virus, named after a suburb of Brisbane with a number of stables adjacent to a horse racing course. Bats were eating the mangoes in the surrounding trees where the horses graze, the horses were infected by the droppings and transferred the virus to their handlers. The fatality rate for this virus is 60%. It's extremely dangerous.

Hendra. I didn't know about the virus then, but that's where I was stealing mangoes from. I could have been patient zero.
posted by adept256 at 6:33 PM on October 23, 2022 [16 favorites]

I've seen mangoes appear in American cooking shows - you are getting ripped off. We would throw those away. A Queensland mango is three times that size.
posted by adept256 at 6:40 PM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well, whatever shitty varietal of Mango we can get here in Seattle tend to be pretty fucking delicious...
posted by Windopaene at 6:50 PM on October 23, 2022

I think the mangoes that are exported are smaller, as they are picked and exported earlier. Large mangoes have a very short shelf life, so they're mostly found in Queensland anyway.

There are few things in life better than dividing a big, cold fresh mango up into 'hedgehogs' and the middle slice bit and just standing over the sink devouring the whole thing.
posted by dg at 8:47 PM on October 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you like mangoes, Miami is an excellent place to be. They're quite a popular fruit, but there are so damn many mango trees around that the number that end up falling to the ground and either rotting or getting consumed by animals is vast. I laugh when I see the occasional complaint online about "someone stealing mangoes". There is such an embarrassment of riches that it's unfathomable to me that someone could get worked up about it without there being more to the story.
posted by wierdo at 11:56 PM on October 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

I lived in a mango-growing country for a year when I was quite small; our neighbours had a mango tree, and shared the bounty with us. I learned that mangoes are delicious.

Then we moved back to the UK, and I spent decades puzzled that apparently my memory had betrayed me twice over: I didn't actually like mangoes very much, and they were red-yellow, not green.

And *then* I found out that there are lots of different varieties of mango, some of which are indeed green, and also that there is a world of difference between a tree-ripened mango and one picked early for shipping.

Hey-ho.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 3:44 AM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Kumail Nanjiani has a great bit in his one standup special about how everyone in India has a story that they love to tell about the best mango they ever had, and honestly I think the only thing stopping that from being a completely universal phenomenon is that it’s much harder to get a properly good, ripe mango in most places.

Like… I can’t think of any other fruits where a truly great one transcends “good food” into “life-changing experience”
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:13 AM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

There are about 6 varieties of mango commonly available in the USA, and they are popular because of shelf life and resistance to bruising, more than flavor. Like the Tommy Atkins cultivar from Florida that can be found everywhere.

These common varieties range in flavor from “tropical and citrusy” to “tropical and peachy”. And except for the Ataulfo they range in texture from fibrous to somewhat fibrous.

Here in Mexico similar varieties dominate grocery chains, but if you go to any tianguis or roadside stand you can find all kinds of weird and delicious mangoes. Soft as butter that you can spread on toast, small mangoes that are 90% pit but you bite off the tip and squeeze like a juice box, mangoes with the aroma of jasmine, thick skinned tart mangoes that have so much pectin in the skin you can make jam out of anything, deep red skinned mangoes that taste like apples and make great pie, the extremely sweet ripe Manila mangoes, the orange fleshed ones that taste like honey…. These are all “backyard” mangoes sold locally.

If you want to hike there is a canyon a couple hours drive away. You hike down to the bottom in June, in the heat, and are rewarded by a grove of feral mangoes growing on the riverbank. They are small, thin skinned, with a soft texture that is almost like a smoothie. You take as many as you can carry, sit under the little waterfall, and eat them like a starving monkey, biting through the skin and squeezing the pulp out. Let the sticky juices run down your face and chest, make rivers of mango juice, dirt, and sweat down your forearms and drip drip drip from the tip of your elbows. Lean back into the waterfall and let the cool fresh water wash everything away.

Or if you are in the US, talk to your Indian, Pakistani, Thai or Filipino neighbors. I used to get great backyard mangoes from Southern California in San Francisco from a small Indian grocery store close to Geary and Fillmore, and from a Filipino shop by 6th and Mission. Other shops would get them shipped, there are a couple of weeks in the summer when I could get imported Thai mangoes in a shop close to Eddy and Hyde.
posted by Dr. Curare at 8:01 AM on October 24, 2022 [8 favorites]

I heard a story about a friend's uncle who was stopped at customs (coming back in to the U.S. via San Francisco) with a duffel bag of mangoes and told that they would have to throw them out because it was illegal to bring fresh fruit into the country. The way I recall the story being told is my friend bellowing (in imitation of said uncle) IT'S LEGAL IF THEY'RE IN MY BELLY! and then miming the process of eating a duffel bag of mangoes. I hope some other travelers got to share in the bounty. I would 500% stop to ask if I could have some mangoes if I saw somebody squatting at customs scarfing them down.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:13 AM on October 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

There exists a photo of me at the transcendental instant of mango perfection. I'm on a Thai island for scuba diving and have just purchased a tender, aromatic jewel from a guy with a cart and am eating it monkey-style over the edge of a boat dock. Little fishes come to investigate the drops of sweet nectar that fall from my chin into the harbour.

The photo also happens to be the last mango I've ever eaten. It turns out I'm allergic to mango skin (some contain urushiol, the same stuff that poisons ivy) and that mango triggered it and ruined the vacation and the scuba dives too.

My body hungers for an experience I can never have again. But hey, at least I went out on top!
posted by Enkidude at 5:38 PM on October 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

Ah man, mangoes are the best.

When I was a kid I my best friend lived on a property with five massive, century old mango trees in a paddock up the back. They'd been planted in a bit circle and the canopies were all intermingled, and during mango season we'd climb up into the extensive city of treehouses she'd built with her brother and just....stay there. All day. The trees fruited so magnificiently that we didn't need to come down for anything. Turns out my metabolism can handle a diet of 90% mango, thankfully. We'd eat the flesh and drop skins and well sucked pits down to ground level, where her horses would just appear and devour any leavings.

I have a huge mango tree in my yard now. Like the younger adept256, we're in Brisbane and while I've had mango trees in my yard in the past the competition is always, always fierce. Bats take the high ones and the possums take the low ones, so you gotta be quick. I had a smaller, sheltered tree in a rental a few years back, under a massive mulberry bush, and you'd think a tree in shade wouldn't fruit but it developed eight whoppers. Too sheltered for the bats to manage, but next to a house with dogs so I was so, so hopeful. I diligently bagged as described in the article, as a ward against fruit flies and other insect pests, and then mere weeks before harvest - days maybe! - we had the most massive hail storm in like fifty years, lost all the windows in my house and all the mangoes too.

We only moved to this new joint like, two months ago, so I'm not sure how well the tree will fruit. It's got no flowers but the elderly gent next door has like, six kids, and they all speak lavishly of spending summers in the tree, gorging themselves just as I once did, so I am hopeful. A little at least, for now.
posted by Jilder at 3:45 AM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thorzdad, I was just reading about the mango/green pepper thing! It came up in this post on r/Old_Recipes which points to this blog post which references but does not link to a NYT article and claims:

When mangoes were first imported to the American colonies in the 1600s, they had to be pickled, because of lack of refrigeration. Other fruits also had to be pickled, and came to be known as ‘mangoes’, especially green peppers. People mistook the term mango as the process, rather than the fruit they were getting. In 1699, an early American cookbook refers to a “mango of cucumbers” and a “mango of walnuts.” By the early 1700s, almost anything that could be pickled – apples, peaches, apricots, plums – was called a ‘mango.’ One of the most popular of these ‘mangoes’ was a bell pepper stuffed with spiced cabbage and pickled.

posted by yeahlikethat at 8:13 AM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]

One of the most perfect gifts I have ever received was fresh sliced mango on my birthday from a fruit place near Miami. Mangoes are the best.
posted by plonkee at 2:11 PM on October 25, 2022

I've already mentioned Andrew Weil's The Marriage of the Sun and Moon in clawsoon's If you've seen one eclipse... thread. Apart from his experiences with hunting and consuming psilocybin mushrooms, it's a a compendium of mostly non-drug induced consciousness altering experiences of which he found watching solar eclipses to be the most profound.

But another non-hallucinogenic experience he listed was eating mangoes fresh from the tree. I do have one friend who wandered Central America in his youth who confirmed the truth of this experience long ago. But until now I had no idea until now of the dangers of eating fresh picked or fallen mangoes in Australia. Fruit eating bats lead to funnel web mangoes -- who'd a-thunk? You Ozzies get all the fun.

Another non-drug consciousness altering experience Weil lists is eating hot peppers. He recounts seeing a toddler in Nicaragua eating a just picked habanero. YMMV
posted by y2karl at 6:16 AM on October 26, 2022 [1 favorite]