If you buy a green papaya, you can wrap it in newspaper or a paper bag until it is ripe. Those fruits are long with lots of juicy pulp. The hermaphroditic flowers produce the most desirable fruits. The feminine flowers produce fruits that are round and have little pulp, that have also very low commercial value. The masculine flowers produce a pear-shaped fruit that is not sold. The carica papaya tree has masculine, feminine, and hermaphroditic flowers. It is called carica papaya and has large leaves that are confined to the top of the tree. The tree-like plant, which produces papayas, has a single stem that can grow up to 30 feet tall. Papaya use beyond foodīesides food, papaya is also widely used in cosmetics, including in facemasks, makeup creams or shampoos. In Brazil, papaya is not only often consumed as is, but it is also often incorporated into ice creams as in today’s crème de papaya recipe, juices, fruit drinks, smoothies, compotes (typically made with green papaya similar to the papaya and coconut jam Vera made when we traveled to Tuvalu), but also savory and sweet salads, in the same spirit as som tam salad from Thailand that Vera shared with us a couple years ago. The varieties of Golden, Formosa and Calimosa (a crossing between Golden and Formosa) are the most common in Brazil.
The skin is typically thin, smooth and fairly tough, sticking to the flesh, with a dark-green color that becomes orange when the fruit is ripe. Papaya possesses a number of medicinal benefits, including contributing to weight loss or lowering cholesterol.īrazilian papaya has a soft and very aromatic flesh. It is commonly used as a meat tenderizer but it is also used to ferment liquors, and as soap for washing clothes. Papaya is a great source of Vitamin A, B and C. Thanks to the climate of these regions, papaya can be produced and offered to consumers year-round. The largest plantations in Brazil can be found in the state of Espírito Santo and in the northeast part of the country. Originally from southern Mexico, Central America, as well as northern South America, papaya is now cultivated in most tropical countries as it is very sensitive to low temperatures and frost.
Papaya world productionīrazil has now become one of the most important growers and exporters of papaya along with Central American countries, but also India and Nigeria. The crop reached Hawaii between 18, and in 1900, papaya seeds were taken to Florida, probably from Bahamas’ plantations. Then, the seeds were taken from India to Naples in Italy.
In Brazil, it became known in the early seventeenth century in Bahia. The spread of papaya started around 1500, when the Spanish conquerors carried seeds to Panama and the Dominican Republic.ĭuring the following century, Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors took the seeds to the Philippines, Malaysia and India. It seemed that this name was given to the fruit because of the resemblance between the shape of a papaya and a female breast. The word for papaya in Brazilian Portuguese is mamão, which literally means “large breast” (or even “big tits”). In Spanish countries, it is called melón zapote, lechosa, payaya, fruta bomba, mamón or mamona.