Breadnut or
Artocarpus Camansi, is the ancestor of breadfruit, the more widely known green football (soccer-ball) shaped starchy tropical fruit found across the warm regions of the world. Unlike the breadfruit, the breadnut is full of seeds. When ripe the fruit softens and falls to the ground. That's where I found this one, under a tree on my parents' farm. In the photo below you can see the very soft fruit, with its soft green spiny exterior. The seeds, to the right, comprise up to 50% of the weight of the fruit and can be easily removed from the ripe flesh.
According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden
website, the seeds of the breadnut are low in fat (6-29%) and high in protein (13-20%) compared to seeds such as the almond and are a good source of minerals.
All I know is that they are delicious if properly prepared, with a flavour and texture very much like that of chestnuts. Breadnut, although originally from New Guinea and Indonesia, is not common in Oceania like the breadfruit but has spread across the Caribbean, so you might find it there. If so you have stumbled across a versatile seed that can be treated exactly as chestnuts would be. In the photo above you can see the seeds embedded in the breadnut's ripe flesh, below are the seeds themselves.
Drop the seeds into hot salted water and give them a boil for about 10 minutes, then peel the thin shell off (once they have cooled a bit) to reveal delicious chestnut like goodness. This can be mashed with butter, put into a stuffing, glazed with sugar syrup to make "breadnut glacee" or blended with some rich stock to make a filling and delicate soup. They can also be roasted for an even more intense flavour. If you live in the tropics or run across a breadnut sometime, it is worth experimenting with! Fruits are also harvested green by pulling them off the tree and cooked seeds and all in soups and stews. Let me know if you have ever eaten breadnut seeds and what you made with them.
According to the National Tropical Botanical Garden website, the seeds of the breadnut are low in fat (6-29%) and high in protein (13-20%) compared to seeds such as the almond and are a good source of minerals.
All I know is that they are delicious if properly prepared, with a flavour and texture very much like that of chestnuts. Breadnut, although originally from New Guinea and Indonesia, is not common in Oceania like the breadfruit but has spread across the Caribbean, so you might find it there. If so you have stumbled across a versatile seed that can be treated exactly as chestnuts would be. In the photo above you can see the seeds embedded in the breadnut's ripe flesh, below are the seeds themselves.
Drop the seeds into hot salted water and give them a boil for about 10 minutes, then peel the thin shell off (once they have cooled a bit) to reveal delicious chestnut like goodness. This can be mashed with butter, put into a stuffing, glazed with sugar syrup to make "breadnut glacee" or blended with some rich stock to make a filling and delicate soup. They can also be roasted for an even more intense flavour. If you live in the tropics or run across a breadnut sometime, it is worth experimenting with! Fruits are also harvested green by pulling them off the tree and cooked seeds and all in soups and stews. Let me know if you have ever eaten breadnut seeds and what you made with them.
Really informative! I ate these before but had no idea where they came from. They were simply boiled in salted water but they were delicious!
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