When Fruit Meets Meat, Chili, Cheese, and Salt

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Text to type: A useful way to understand these foods is to notice three things: the fruit, its partner, and the final result. Melon with ham is a clear starting point. It is a specialty in Spanish, Italian, and French cooking, usually served in spring and summer. The plate contains melon and slices of ham. The ham may be serrano ham from Spain, Bayonne ham from France, or another salty ham. In prosciutto e melone, the Italian name for this pairing, sweet melon meets salty cured ham. The fruit and meat stay separate and easy to recognize. The surprising result comes from the strong difference between their flavors.

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Text to type: Some combinations place fruit inside a rich meat dish. Duck à l’orange is a French dish of roast duck with bigarade sauce, a sauce made with bitter Seville oranges. Its main ingredients include duck, orange, butter, stock, sugar, and vinegar. The first published recipe appeared in 1813 in The French Cook. Fesenjan is a sweet-and-sour Iranian stew from Gilan. It is a khoresh, an Iranian stew served over rice. Its main mix is pomegranate juice or paste, ground walnuts, and poultry such as duck or chicken. It can also contain other meats. Unlike melon with ham, the fruit becomes part of the sauce and gives flavor to the whole dish.

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Text to type: Green papaya salad shows that a fruit dish does not need to be sweet. It is a spicy salad made from shredded unripe papaya. In Thailand it is called som tam, the Thai name for this sour, salty, and spicy salad. The mix includes sour lime, hot chili, salty fish sauce, and a little palm sugar. Dried shrimp may also be included. Chamoy offers another surprising use of fruit. Chamoy is a Mexican sauce made from pickled fruit, salt, and chili. Fruit is packed in brine, which is salty water used for pickling, sometimes with vinegar. The fruit brine is then seasoned with chili powder. The finished sauce can be put on fresh fruit, adding salty, sour, sweet, and spicy flavors.

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Text to type: Hawaiian pizza is a Canadian pizza with pineapple, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and ham or bacon. Sam Panopoulos is credited with making the first one at the Satellite Restaurant in Ontario in 1962. He tried the mix because Canadian Chinese dishes often combine sweet and sour flavors. The name came from the canned pineapple brand he used, not from the state of Hawaii. Romeu e Julieta is a traditional Brazilian pairing of cheese and goiabada, a thick guava conserve. The simplest plate is guava conserve on a slice of cheese. It is believed to have begun in Minas Gerais during the colonial period. Both dishes place sweet fruit beside salty cheese, but one is a pizza and the other is a simple fruit-and-cheese plate.

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