Abiu
A bright yellow Amazonian fruit with translucent jelly-like flesh and a flavor reminiscent of crème caramel — sticky white latex and all.
52 fruits containing the letter U — each with origin, classification, and notes.
Below are fruits that contain the letter U anywhere in the name. Each of the 52 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 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 small, deep-blue North American berry famous for its high antioxidant content, eaten fresh or in baked goods, jams, and breakfast cereals.
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.
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.
Another name for sapodilla — a small brown Mexican-Filipino fruit with grainy sweet flesh tasting of brown sugar and pear, tied to the same tree that produces chicle (chewing-gum sap).
A rare orange-amber Arctic berry that grows in remote bogs across the boreal north — Scandinavia's most prized wild berry, with no commercial cultivation despite decades of attempts.
The seed of a tropical palm, technically a drupe rather than a nut, source of oil, milk, water, flesh, and one of the most-used ingredients in tropical cooking.
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 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.
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 wild dark berry of the western North American mountains — beloved by hikers, hunted by bears, and impossible to cultivate, sustaining a regional Pacific Northwest jam-and-pie economy.
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 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 small Asian fruit (also called Chinese date or red date) that turns from apple-crisp green to wrinkled-skinned brown-red as it dries — eaten fresh, dried, or simmered in tonics.
Not actually a berry but the female cone of the juniper tree — a small dark blue spice used for centuries to flavor gin, game meats, and northern European preserves.
A small fuzzy brown fruit with vivid green flesh and tiny black seeds, originally a Chinese gooseberry, rebranded by New Zealand growers to global fame.
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 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 bright orange Andean fruit (also called naranjilla) that looks like a small tomato but tastes like a tart pineapple-citrus-rhubarb mash — a Colombian and Ecuadorian breakfast-juice essential.
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.
A grape-sized Mexican vine fruit (also called Mexican sour gherkin or cucamelon) that looks exactly like a tiny watermelon but tastes like a tart cucumber-lime.
A long, blackberry-like fruit grown across temperate regions of the world — often available free from neighborhood trees, vital for silkworms, and beloved by birds.
The catch-all category for fragrant netted-skin melons including American cantaloupes — named for the musky aroma of fully ripe fruit, central to summer fruit traditions worldwide.
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.
A small to medium-sized stone fruit of the rose family, with hundreds of varieties from the deep purple Damson of Britain to the golden Mirabelle of Lorraine — eaten fresh, dried into prunes, or made into liqueurs and sauces.
A 50/50 plum-apricot hybrid created by Luther Burbank in the 1880s — the original parent of pluots, apriums, and the entire modern stone-fruit hybrid family.
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 pear-shaped, fragrant, hard-fleshed fruit eaten almost exclusively cooked — the basis of Spanish *membrillo* paste and a foundational ingredient in Mediterranean and Persian sweets.
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, 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 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.
A spiky-skinned tropical American fruit with creamy, intensely sweet-tart white flesh — the *guanábana* of Latin American smoothies, with an aroma combining strawberry, pineapple, and citrus.
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 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 bumpy, lopsided Jamaican citrus hybrid of grapefruit, orange, and tangerine — the trademarked name reflects its homely appearance, which conceals juicy, sweet flesh.
Japanese salt-pickled sour plums — not actually a plum but a pickled ume apricot, intensely sour and salty, eaten as a rice accompaniment, used as a natural preservative, and believed in Japan to cure everything from hangovers to bacterial infections.
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 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.
Also called yangmei or Chinese bayberry — a knobbly red or purple fruit native to East Asia with sweet-tart flavor, high antioxidant content, and a brief, fragile fresh season.
A small bumpy yellow Japanese citrus that's all aroma and almost no juice — used for zest and a few drops of intensely fragrant juice, central to Japanese cuisine and increasingly to Western cocktails.
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.
Try fruits that start with U, or end with U. Or browse the full fruits index.