Description of mammonchillo, calorie content and chemical composition of the fruit. Useful properties and contraindications for use. How is Spanish lime eaten, what dishes can you cook with it? Interesting facts about the tropical plant. A decoction of the leaves lowers the temperature, reduces intoxication, relieves the symptoms of fever. An infusion of Spanish lime pulp with leaves and seeds has a sedative effect and prevents the development of depression.
External application of a mixture of pulp and seeds stops the development of skin diseases, destroys parasites - lice, scabies mites.
Often in women who have to control their own weight on a daily basis, mood begins to deteriorate due to constant malnutrition. In this case, mammonchillo will help. There is a lot of dietary fiber in the viscous pulp, due to which the introduction into the diet causes a feeling of fullness. In addition, the high amount of carbohydrates in the composition helps to restore the energy reserve, which is necessary for intense workouts. Without going in for sports, it is impossible to maintain a beautiful figure.
Contraindications and harm to mammachillo
There are no absolute contraindications to the use of tropical fruits. But you need to consider the likely allergic reactions.
Possible harm from mammonchillo for people who first tried the fruit:
- With reduced acidity, constipation develops;
- With urolithiasis and cholelithiasis, the risk of calculus moving along the ducts increases;
- During pregnancy, an allergic reaction can be provoked.
You should not introduce tasty pulp into the diet for children under 5 years old.
When overeating, there is a high likelihood of indigestion and increased flatulence in adults and intestinal obstruction in children.
Unripe fruits should not be consumed. They have an "astringent" taste, causing first soreness, and then nausea and vomiting. The healers believed that the fruit was poisonous to young children, and limited consumption until puberty. But then it was discovered that the pulp is absolutely safe. And the death and serious condition after use was due to the fact that the babies were suffocating, swallowing flat slippery seeds that blocked the narrow trachea. Before you give your kids Spanish lime, you need to cut it into pieces and make sure the seeds have been removed. In large fruits, there may be not 2 nucleoli, but 3, 4 and even 5.
How is Spanish lime eaten?
The seeds of the fruit are edible, but they are pre-fried before eating. They helped out the Indians of the Orinoco region more than once during the years of poor cassava harvest. The nuts were collected, ground into flour and added to bread baking.
And here is how mammonchillo is eaten. Cut the fragile skin of a ripe fruit with a knife or bite it with teeth, and then suck out the juicy sweet pulp. The peel and seeds, if they are not needed, are thrown away.
But spices are added to sour varieties. Mexicans generously season the slices with salt and chili, pour over the juice of regular lemon or other citrus fruits.
Jam and jelly are made from the pulp of sweet mammonchillos, marmalade is made and juice is squeezed out, and sour varieties are introduced into sauces. Canned juice is popular with locals, and Colombians even export it.
Mamonchillo recipes
The dense, hard shell of the fruit increases the shelf life. The Spanish lime, plucked from the tree, retains its flavor and useful qualities for 3 weeks, and remaining on the tree for up to a month.
Recipes with delicious mammonchillo dishes:
- Dessert "Floating Islands" … It is now considered a French dish and is prepared with dark chocolate or liquid caramel, but for the first time it was invented by Peruvian chefs. Then, instead of melted chocolate, they used the pulp of mammonchillo. Whites and yolks from 2 eggs are beaten separately, evenly distributing a glass of sugar. Milk, 1, 5 cups, bring to a boil, remove from heat. Pour gently whipped yolks into hot milk, stirring constantly. The whipped egg whites are gently placed in boiling water or microwave for a few seconds using a spoon to get dense balls. Then milk with yolks is poured into the bowl, the very ripe pulp of the mammonchillo is mixed in and several islets are lowered. Cool before serving.
- Marmalade … Peel off the fruit, remove the seeds. Mashed potatoes, 1 kg, are placed in an enamel container, add a cut of sweet and sour apples without peel - 0.5 kg, add 1.5 kg of sugar and cook for several minutes until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Then the mashed potatoes are ground to a completely homogeneous structure. The zest is removed from one lemon, and the seeds are removed from the pulp. The slices are interrupted in a blender. The zest and lemon puree are sent to the rest of the fruit. Leave to boil for 40 minutes, and before turning off, for 3 minutes, add cinnamon and cardamom. Jars are sterilized. Remove from heat and place in containers until the fruit mass has cooled. In the future, the marmalade is taken out of the molds, cut into pieces and rolled in powdered sugar.
- Sauce … The pulp of sour mammonchillo, 0.5 kg, is mixed in an enamel saucepan with slicing: 1 chili pod, 1 bell pepper, 1, 5 red onions and half a head of garlic. Add tomato paste and vegetable oil - a tablespoon each. All are mixed so that a homogeneous structure is obtained. You can use a blender to do this. Salted and sweetened (you need about a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar). Put on fire, warm up, stirring constantly. When it is a quarter boiled down, add parsley slicing, seasonings to taste, boil for another 5 minutes. Cool before serving.
Spanish lime juice is added to ice cream, soft drinks, and various sauces. It is made from overripe fruits. At least 1 sour fruit is added to 1 kg of sweet mammonchillo.
Pour a glass of water into a saucepan with Spanish lime pulp, 1 kg, and heat until the first bubbles appear. They don't let it boil. Remove from heat, let stand for 40 minutes, filter and rub mashed potatoes through a sieve. The resulting liquid mass is again placed in a saucepan, again brought to almost a boil, 50-80 g of sugar is added. When sugar dissolves, remove from heat and pour into sterilized jars.
Interesting facts about mammachillo
The plant was first described by the Dutch physician Patrick Brown in 1756. He investigated the medicinal properties of plant parts. In 1760, trees attracted the interest of another researcher, Nikolaus Joseph von Jaken, who, despite being a metallurgist, was fond of chemistry and botany. And in 1762, the famous naturalist Karl Linnaeus began to study the species, changing the name from Melicoccus bijugatus to Melicocca bijuga. In 1994, the name given by the first researchers was returned to Mammonchillo.
The Spanish lime is not a tropical tree that perishes in natural disasters. It tolerates light frosts, dry seasons, thin air, depleted soils - calcareous and sandy. It can reproduce vegetatively and by seeds. On a mamonchillo grown from seeds, fruits appear 10-15 years after planting, and on those that have risen from cuttings - after 4-6 years.
Deciduous tree. It is very interesting to observe the change of foliage. The crown is exposed almost instantly, within 2 minutes. A dense yellow carpet forms under the tree. And then, within 4-5 hours, new leaves bloom on the branches.
The crop can be harvested from late summer to the first days of September. Maturity is evidenced by a change in the quality of the peel: it first becomes wrinkled, and then brittle and brittle, begins to crack. So that the fruits do not lose market value when falling, they are carefully cut with special knives, attaching a ladder to the trunk.
Flowers are very attractive to bees. Dark honey smells fragrant and is in demand among the local population. The seeds are carried by birds and large bats, which happily eat the sweet juicy pulp. The best varieties grown in Puerto Rico are Perfa, Ponce, Jose Pabon, Sasa, Sotomayor.
The Spanish lime is still of interest to scientists. Botanists still cannot understand why a tree planted in the botanical gardens of California and Spain blooms and bears fruit, while in Israel and Bermuda, flowers do not open under the same conditions, and, accordingly, it is impossible to get fruits.
Fruits are not specially harvested from trees growing in parks and reserves. Tourists and visitors to the rides are allowed to pluck Spanish limes to quench their thirst while walking.
Fruit juice is used not only in food, but also in the textile industry. With its help, natural fabrics are dyed.
Wood is used for various joinery work - it is hard, dense, heavy, not subject to decay. But the leaves would be useful in European conditions. It is enough to scatter them on the earthen floor, and all fleas will disappear. This would be of great help to ground floor tenants and garden house owners in humid areas.
What a mammachillo looks like - watch the video:
