Abiu
A bright yellow Amazonian fruit with translucent jelly-like flesh and a flavor reminiscent of crème caramel — sticky white latex and all.
116 fruits containing the letter A — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are fruits that contain the letter A anywhere in the name. Each of the 116 fruits below opens to a full profile.
A bright yellow Amazonian fruit with translucent jelly-like flesh and a flavor reminiscent of crème caramel — sticky white latex and all.
A small dark purple Amazonian palm berry that briefly conquered Western health foods in the 2000s — the actual fruit is mostly pit, with a thin, oily, antioxidant-rich pulp.
A small bright-red Caribbean cherry-like fruit packed with extraordinarily high vitamin C — used in juices and supplements rather than fresh eating because of its short shelf life.
A West African red-skinned fruit that opens to reveal yellow custard-textured arils — the national fruit of Jamaica, but lethally toxic if eaten before fully ripe.
A small, thick-skinned wild African citrus with intensely fragrant peel and tart pulp — used more for marmalade and traditional medicine than fresh eating.
A Japanese vine fruit with a pale-purple pod that splits open along its length when ripe, exposing translucent white-grey flesh studded with tiny black seeds — eaten as a brief seasonal delicacy.
An odd umbrella-leafed forest plant with a single yellow fruit hidden under its canopy — edible only when fully ripe, and toxic in every other part.
The Indian gooseberry — a small, translucent greenish-yellow fruit of extreme sourness and bitterness, one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C; sacred in Hindu tradition and the foundation of Ayurvedic medicine for 5,000 years.
A pome fruit of the rose family, originally from the mountains of Central Asia, now grown in over 7,500 named varieties across the temperate world.
A small velvet-skinned orange stone fruit with a brief season — eaten fresh, dried, or jammed across cuisines from Persian to Provençal.
A bright yellow, intensely tart Amazonian fruit too acidic to eat fresh — instead processed into juice, ice cream, and the famous Peruvian araza-pisco cocktail.
A tropical hybrid fruit — cherimoya × sugar apple — with sweet creamy white flesh, large dark seeds, and a tropical flavor between vanilla custard and pineapple, eaten fresh in tropical regions.
A creamy single-seeded berry from Central America, beloved for its buttery flesh and unusually high content of monounsaturated fats.
A sacred Indian fruit tree — the bael (Bengal quince or stone apple) is one of the most revered plants in Hinduism, its trifoliate leaves used in Shiva worship; the fruit is a hard-shelled sphere the size of a large orange, with dry, orange, aromatic flesh inside that is eaten fresh or made into a beloved Indian drink; dried bael slices are a staple of traditional Ayurvedic medicine.
A tropical berry of the genus Musa, the most widely consumed fruit in the world by weight, mostly grown from a single sterile clone.
The citrus fruit that gives Earl Grey tea its distinctive floral, perfumed flavour — a sour, pear-shaped orange-yellow fruit grown almost exclusively in Calabria, southern Italy; too bitter to eat fresh, its cold-pressed rind oil is one of the most important aromatic compounds in perfumery and flavouring.
A green-skinned Mexican fruit whose ripe interior turns into a thick chocolate-pudding-like brown mash — eaten with a spoon or used as a vegan chocolate substitute.
A glossy black aggregate fruit of bramble vines — fierce wild thickets across temperate regions and the most-foraged fruit in many countries, with intense sweet-tart flavor and abundant seeds.
A small intensely-flavored European berry that's a household staple in Britain and Eastern Europe but virtually unknown in the US — banned for decades to protect the timber industry.
A red-fleshed orange variety from Sicily and Spain — its dramatic red color comes from anthocyanins triggered by cold winter nights, a chemistry trick most citrus regions can't replicate.
A large green tropical fruit with starchy white flesh that bakes to a bread-like texture — staple food across the Pacific Islands and Caribbean, the cargo that triggered the famous Mutiny on the Bounty.
A bizarre yellow citrus that splits into long finger-like segments — all peel and pith with no juice or pulp, used purely for fragrance and zest.
A magenta-fleshed prickly cactus fruit (also called prickly pear or tuna) with a sweet melon-watermelon flavor — heavily harvested in Mexico, Sicily, and the American Southwest.
A tiny citrus from Southeast Asia — a cross between mandarin orange and kumquat, producing a small round fruit with orange flesh and a thin green skin; intensely sour with aromatic orange notes, indispensable in Filipino and Malaysian cooking.
A bright orange Caribbean fruit (also called egg-fruit) with the dry mealy texture of a hard-boiled egg yolk — eaten fresh, in shakes, or as a chilled custard.
An orange-fleshed netted melon — the muskmelon of summer markets, named after a papal estate in Italy, eaten chilled with prosciutto or as a breakfast staple.
A bred-for-extreme chili pepper that held the Guinness record as the world's hottest from 2013 to 2023, with an averaged 1.6 million Scoville heat units.
An Australian rainforest citrus whose elongated finger-shaped fruits burst with translucent pearl-like vesicles — a high-end garnish that exploded in popularity with molecular cuisine.
A close cousin of jackfruit grown across Malaysia and Indonesia — smaller, sweeter, more pungent, and rarely seen outside Southeast Asia because of its overpowering smell.
A heart-shaped Andean fruit with green dimpled skin and creamy custard-like flesh — described by Mark Twain as "the most delicious fruit known to men," with a flavor that combines banana, pineapple, and strawberry.
The wild ancestor of all cultivated apples — small, intensely sour or bitter fruits from wild and ornamental trees, generally too harsh to eat raw but exceptional for making jelly, cider, and crab apple wine; the pectin-rich juice gels easily and the flavour — honeyed, floral, and tart — is unlike any cultivated apple.
A small, intensely tart red berry of North American wetlands — turned into Thanksgiving sauce by colonial Americans and into urinary-tract-infection folklore by mid-20th-century medicine.
A small, intensely tart purple-blue plum almost too astringent to eat fresh — the British countryside fruit of choice for jam, gin, and preserves.
The sweet sticky fruit of the date palm, dried and energy-dense, a staple of Middle Eastern and North African cuisine for thousands of years.
The visually striking fruit of a Central American climbing cactus — bright pink-red shell with green spiky scales, opening to white or magenta flesh dotted with tiny black seeds.
A spiky-shelled Southeast Asian fruit with intensely pungent custard-textured flesh — banned from many hotels and public transit in Asia for its smell, but called the "King of Fruits" where it's eaten.
A small purple-black South Asian summer berry beloved for its tangy-sweet juice that's said to ward off heatstroke — a Pakistani-Indian street-food staple.
A small green ovoid fruit (also called pineapple guava) with intensely fragrant, jelly-textured flesh — a New Zealand orchard staple but virtually unknown elsewhere because it doesn't ship.
An aromatic Israeli muskmelon hybrid created in the 1970s — netted yellow skin with pale green sweet flesh, considered the most fragrant of the supermarket melons.
A small berry of a woody vine, eaten fresh, dried as raisins, or fermented into wine — one of humanity's oldest cultivated fruits.
A large bitter-tart citrus, a hybrid of pomelo and sweet orange that emerged in 18th-century Barbados, eaten fresh or juiced and famous for drug interactions.
Small clustered berries from a woody vine — eaten fresh, dried into raisins, pressed for juice, or fermented into the world's most important beverage, wine.
The most complex and honey-sweet of all plums — a green-skinned, golden-fleshed European plum with a flavour of remarkable depth, described as combining honey, apricot, and fresh cream; considered by many to be the best-tasting plum variety, though its thin skin, tendency to split, and small size make it commercially unviable.
The botanical name for falsa — a small purple South Asian summer berry, also known as Phalsa, used in cooling drinks and Ayurvedic medicine across the subcontinent.
A round green or yellow tropical fruit with intensely fragrant pink or white flesh — a global tropical orchard staple that ranges from sweet snack fruit to ingredient for pastes, juice, and preserves.
A spectacular spiked Pacific Islander fruit that looks like a colorful pineapple-grenade hybrid — eaten fresh in some islands, used as floss thread or paint brush in others.
A Brazilian wonder fruit that grows directly on the trunk and branches of its tree — dark purple berries that look like grapes glued onto bark, with mild grape-lychee flavor and a brief shelf life.
The largest tree-borne fruit in the world — up to 35 kg — with sweet yellow flesh when ripe and a meaty texture used as a vegan meat substitute when unripe.
A medium-hot Mexican chili pepper with thick walls and bright vegetal heat — eaten fresh, pickled, smoked into chipotles, or stuffed and breaded.
A purple-black Indian summer fruit (also called jamun, java plum) with bright purple juice that stains everything — a beloved street snack and a classic Ayurvedic remedy for diabetes.
An East Asian plum species that's the basis for most modern American supermarket plums — large, juicy, with red or yellow skin and easily separated flesh from a small pit.
A 1970s German hybrid combining blackcurrant and gooseberry — thornless, vigorous, productive, and almost unknown commercially despite decades of championing by horticulture writers.
A bumpy-skinned Southeast Asian citrus whose **leaves matter more than the fruit** — fragrant double-lobed leaves are an essential herb in Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian cooking.
An African horned melon with bright orange spiky skin and electric-green jelly flesh — striking enough to be sold as decoration, with a mild banana-cucumber-lime flavor.
A miniature olive-sized citrus eaten whole, peel and all — sweet skin, tart flesh, and a contradiction in your mouth that makes them addictive snacking fruit across East Asia.
A small, grape-sized tropical fruit of Southeast Asia — langsat grows in tight pendant clusters on the trunk and branches of tall trees, with thin, yellow-brown skin that releases a milky latex when broken; the translucent, jelly-like flesh is divided into segments, varying from sweet-tart to slightly bitter depending on how the seed is handled when eating; a beloved fresh fruit in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
A 19th-century California garden hybrid — half blackberry, half raspberry, dark red, intensely flavored, and the historical ancestor of modern boysenberries and tayberries.
A small Asian fruit related to lychee but smaller, milder, and with a clear translucent flesh — the "dragon eye" of Chinese markets, eaten fresh or dried as a tonic ingredient.
A small orange-yellow Asian fruit with sweet-tart flesh and a few large seeds — common in Mediterranean and Asian gardens but rarely in supermarkets, eaten fresh, in jam, or in liqueur.
A subtropical Peruvian fruit with pale yellow flesh, a sweet flavour of maple, sweet potato, and vanilla combined, and very low sugar content despite its sweetness — a pre-Inca sacred fruit now popularised as a health-food sweetener globally.
A small dark Patagonian berry (also called calafate) — Tierra del Fuego's iconic fruit, with a folk legend that whoever eats one will return to Patagonia.
A large Caribbean fruit (Mammea americana, distinct from mamey sapote) with intensely fragrant orange flesh — eaten fresh, stewed, or fermented into Antillean wines and liqueurs.
A large football-shaped Mexican fruit with brown rough skin and dense salmon-pink flesh — the defining flavor of Cuban-Mexican milkshakes and tropical ice cream.
A small loose-skinned orange citrus — the original ancestor species behind clementines, satsumas, tangerines, and most modern winter snack-citrus varieties.
A tropical drupe known as the "king of fruits" in South Asia, prized for its sweet, juicy flesh and grown across more than 100 countries.
A purple-shelled tropical Asian fruit with snow-white segmented flesh of intense sweet-tart flavor — the "queen of fruits" to many connoisseurs, banned from U.S. import for decades, now slowly returning.
An Oregon-bred blackberry hybrid, named for Marion County — the defining berry of Pacific Northwest pies, jams, and ice cream, prized for its complex sweet-tart flavor.
An ancient European fruit that must be eaten after it has partially rotted (bletting) — small, brown, and unprepossessing, with a sweet, apple-butter-like flesh consumed only after frost has softened it; beloved in medieval Europe, nearly forgotten today.
A small West African red berry that **temporarily makes sour foods taste sweet** — chewing one transforms lemon and vinegar into sugary treats for about an hour.
A bumpy bright-orange East Asian fruit (also called luo han guo or monk fruit) — its concentrated extract has become a popular zero-calorie sweetener that's hundreds of times sweeter than sugar.
The fruit of the Swiss cheese plant — a fragrant tropical curiosity that ripens over 12 months, tastes like pineapple-banana, and is mildly toxic until fully ripe.
The Asian pear — round, apple-shaped, with golden-yellow skin and exceptionally crisp, juicy, grainy white flesh; doesn't soften like European pears but is eaten firm and crunchy, with a clean sweet flavour.
A smooth-skinned variant of the peach, the same species genetically with one gene difference, often slightly more tart and aromatic than its fuzzy cousin.
A bright citrus with sweet juicy flesh and aromatic peel, the world's most widely cultivated fruit by tonnage and the namesake for the color itself.
A tropical melon-like fruit with vivid orange flesh, central black seeds, and an enzyme that tenderizes meat — eaten ripe and unripe in different cuisines.
A Russian heritage cultivar of small ornamental-style pears, often used for preserves and country-style cookery, prized for hardiness in cold climates.
A small purple or yellow tropical fruit with intensely fragrant pulp full of crunchy edible seeds — the wow ingredient of cocktails, sorbets, and Latin American desserts.
An unexpected native North American tropical-tasting fruit — soft custardy yellow flesh, banana-mango flavor, and a baffling absence from American grocery stores despite being a beloved Appalachian forest fruit.
A fuzzy-skinned stone fruit of the rose family with sweet aromatic flesh and a single woody pit, originating in China and now grown in temperate orchards worldwide.
A pome fruit of the rose family — closely related to apples but with grittier flesh and a teardrop shape, with thousands of varieties and a unique post-harvest ripening behavior.
The golden berry in a papery lantern — physalis (cape gooseberry) is a small, bright orange berry enclosed in a papery husk that peels back like a Chinese lantern to reveal the sweet-sharp fruit inside; used as a decorative garnish on desserts, eaten fresh, and made into jam; not related to the gooseberry despite the name.
A tropical multiple fruit with spiky armor and a crown of leaves, sweet and acidic, eaten fresh, juiced, grilled, or canned.
A stunning cactus fruit from the Americas — sold worldwide as dragon fruit — with brilliantly pink or yellow skin and speckled white or vivid red flesh dotted with tiny edible seeds, mild in flavor but extraordinary in color and nutrition.
A starchier cousin of the banana, eaten cooked across tropical cuisines from West Africa to Latin America to South Asia — fried, mashed, boiled, or grilled, but rarely raw.
A tough-skinned fruit packed with hundreds of jewel-like seeds (arils), each surrounded by tart-sweet juice — a Persian native steeped in mythology.
Australia's native peach — a small, bright red fruit with tart, tangy flesh and a large deeply ridged stone; a staple of Aboriginal Australian diet for thousands of years, now increasingly used in Australian native cuisine and bush food products.
A dried grape — concentrated sweetness from the most ancient food-preservation method, central to baking, snacking, and cuisines from Persian to Mexican to American school lunchboxes.
A small Southeast Asian fruit with a fluorescent red shell covered in soft pliable spines, opening to reveal lychee-like translucent flesh — visually startling, mild and sweet to eat.
A small, intensely-flavored aggregate fruit of a thorny rose-family bramble, eaten fresh or cooked into preserves, sauces, and brandy.
A small, jewel-like red berry — translucent, intensely tart, and a classic Northern European garden fruit used in jellies, sauces for game, and showcase dessert garnishes.
The vegetable that acts like a fruit — rhubarb's bright red-green stalks are so acidic they cannot be eaten without sugar, but when cooked with sugar they produce a tart, uniquely flavoured ingredient for pies, crumbles, and jam; forced Yorkshire rhubarb, grown in dark sheds, is a protected food with a distinctive pale pink colour and more delicate flavour.
A pear-shaped Southeast Asian fruit (also called wax apple or jambu) with crisp pale flesh, sweet rosewater scent, and a near-empty hollow center — eaten fresh as a hot-weather refresher.
An Indonesian fruit (also called snake fruit) with reddish-brown scaly skin like a snake's, garlic-pineapple flavor, and deep ties to Balinese cultural ceremony.
A small dark Pacific Northwest forest berry — central to Coast Salish foodways, more ornamental than commercial today, but a foundation of Indigenous coastal cuisine for millennia.
A bright orange-pink Pacific Northwest forest raspberry — eaten fresh by hikers, cooked traditionally by Coast Salish peoples, a key indicator of healthy temperate rainforest ecology.
A small brown tropical fruit with grainy sweet flesh tasting of brown sugar and pear — the same species as chico fruit, with an even longer history as the original chewing-gum source.
A general Spanish-language category covering several unrelated tropical fruits with soft sweet flesh — the most common are white sapote, mamey sapote, and black sapote, each from a different botanical family.
A small seedless Japanese mandarin variety — easy to peel, low in acid, the iconic Japanese winter fruit and the dominant mandarin in much of the American South.
A thorny coastal shrub producing dense clusters of tiny bright orange berries — extraordinarily rich in vitamin C (ten times more than oranges), omega-7 fatty acids, and carotenoids; the astringent, intensely sour berries are too sharp to eat raw but make vivid orange juice, jams, and syrups popular across Northern Europe and Russia.
The bitter orange used for the world's most celebrated marmalade — too sour and pungent to eat fresh, its thick peel and intensely flavoured juice are perfect for jam-making; the brief winter season (January–February) is eagerly awaited by British marmalade makers, and the orange's history in Spain stretches to the Moorish period.
A large round Caribbean fruit with milky-sweet white pulp arranged in a star pattern around the seeds — a Jamaican and Cuban favorite eaten fresh or in the elegant Cuban dessert "matrimonio."
A tropical fruit with a distinctive five-ridged shape that produces a perfect five-pointed star when sliced crosswise — crisp, juicy, and sweet-tart, and widely used in Asian cooking as much as a vegetable as a dessert fruit.
A small red aggregate fruit with seeds on the outside, a hybrid that emerged in 18th-century France from a chance crossing of North and South American species.
A small red ribbed Brazilian backyard fruit (also called pitanga) with intense complex flavor between cherry, raspberry, and tropical resin — extreme polarity between underripe (terrible) and ripe (delicious).
A small egg-shaped tropical fruit also called tree tomato, with tangy red-orange flesh that bridges fruit and vegetable in cooking.
A sticky brown pod-fruit with intensely tart-sweet pulp — fundamental to Indian, Southeast Asian, Mexican, and Caribbean cuisines, providing sour acidity in pad thai, chutneys, and chamoy.
A tangerine-pomelo hybrid with a distinctive nipple-like bump at the stem end — juicy, sweet-tart, easy to peel, and the genetic ancestor of several modern grocery citrus varieties.
A small, sweet, easy-to-peel citrus fruit, a member of the mandarin orange family that gives most modern citrus hybrids their sweetness.
A 1970s Scottish blackberry-raspberry hybrid named for the river Tay — long sweet-tart wine-red fruit with intense flavor, popular in home gardens but virtually absent from supermarkets.
Britain's most beloved plum — a large, oval, red-yellow plum with sweet yellow flesh and a clingstone; named after Queen Victoria, and accounting for the majority of all plum trees grown in British gardens and orchards.
A small, tart-sweet African fruit (also called Spanish tamarind) eaten fresh or made into juice, with bright orange flesh around large flat seeds and a flavor between apple and tamarind.
A large, water-rich melon with a thick striped rind and bright pink-red flesh — a summer staple worldwide and originally an African crop.
A pale translucent variety of redcurrant — sweeter, less acidic, eaten fresh more than its red sibling, and once a fixture of Victorian dessert tables for its jewel-like appearance.
A green-skinned Mexican fruit (Casimiroa edulis) with creamy custard-like flesh and a banana-vanilla-pear flavor — citrus family relative, despite the deceptive sapote name and total lack of citrus character.
A small, sour-sweet yellow-orange fruit known as wild plum or sea lemon, eaten across African savannas and used for its oil-rich seed in traditional cosmetics.
Botanically a fruit (a *pepo* berry) though treated culinarily as a vegetable, the zucchini is the most-grown summer squash and a green-skinned, tender-fleshed kitchen workhorse.
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