The largest edible fruit native to North America. Custard-like texture, tropical banana-mango flavor. Called the Indiana banana — Lewis and Clark ate it to survive. Black Appalachian families foraged creek bottoms in late summer.
Black Appalachian families — particularly in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, and the Carolinas — knew pawpaw creek bottoms the way other communities know berry patches. You went in late August to early September when the trees dropped. The fruit fed families and required nothing but knowing where to look.
Pawpaw fruit has one of the highest iron and magnesium contents of any temperate fruit — relevant for Black women, who carry the highest rate of iron-deficiency anemia in the US. Vitamin C content exceeds apple and grape. Recent research on pawpaw's annonaceous acetogenin compounds shows cytotoxic activity against certain cancer cell lines in vitro — the science is early but the signal is real. Seeds and skin contain asimicin, a potent toxin — eat only the flesh.
Eat fresh within 2-3 days of harvest — pawpaw does not transport well, which is why it never went commercial. Scoop the flesh from the skin with a spoon; discard seeds (toxic) and skin. Use in smoothies, ice cream, pudding, or eat plain. Pawpaw ice cream is the traditional preservation method — the custardy flesh freezes beautifully. Also made into pawpaw bread similar to banana bread.
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