points by eltondegeneres 3 days ago | 0 comments
This is notable because it's in an unheated greenhouse. Lots of botanical gardens around the world, like the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in NYC, have fruit-bearing cacao trees in their (heated) tropical rooms.
[–] pvaldes 3 days ago
[–] markdown 3 days ago
> I bet that it tastes 1000 times better than the processed cacao.
It does not. Cacao beans/seeds taste utterly vile. You couldn't imagine in your wildest dreams that the chocolate you buy in stores comes from those disgusting things.
There was a cacao plantation on the side of the road that I walked past every day after school when I was between 5 and 14yrs old. I'd always pick a few on the way home to break open a pod and suck on the beans. But if you accidentally bit into one, well /* insert face vomiting emoji */
[–] bombela 2 days ago
After fermentation and roasting the seeds and removing the shell around the seeds it start to taste like chocolate. But even then it is still very bitter, and the texture is not great at all. It really needs to be finely ground to become palatable, otherwise it's a bit like a bitter chocolate flavored chalk. Extra cocoa butter is usually added for taste and melt in the mouth effect. Leaving extra raw defatted chocolate as a side effect, which is what is sold as cocoa cooking powder, to which you better add a lot of fat for taste.
[–] nkrisc 3 days ago
The only part of the fruit you’d eat unprocessed is the pulp around the seeds. It’s pretty nice, but nothing extraordinary.
I don’t think anyone uses cacao seeds for anything except for processing.
[–] IAmBroom 2 days ago
> I bet that it tastes 1000 times better than the processed cacao.
That's like assuming pure hydrogen tastes better than the oxidized stuff in water.
The tree can not stand long periods of temperatures below 15 Celsius.