Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Tamarillo along with all the Tamarillo containing recipes presented on this site, with 4 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Tamarillo recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Tamarillo as a major wild food ingredient.

Tamarillo (also known as tree tomato, or tomate de árbol and Dutch eggplant) is the fruit of Solanum betaceum, a member of the Solanaceae (Deadly Nightshade) family of flowering plants (which also includes potatoes, tomatoes, capsicums and aubergines).

Solanum betaceum is a small tree or perennial shrub growing, maximally, to some 6m in height. The leaves are heart-shaped at the base and pointed at the apex and are muskily odorous. These are alternate and fairly large (10-35cm long and 1-10cm wide) and grow along the length of the brown, woody, adult branches and stems of the plant.

The fragrant inflorescences of the plant are borne in small, loose clusters near the branch tips during late summer or early autumn, typically 3-12 flowers in single inflorescences. Once fertilized these develop into the fruit (one per inflorescence) which are egg-shaped and can grow up to 8cm in length and 3cm in diameter and have yellow or red skins with a waxy, bitter, exocarp and may have faint dark longitudinal strips. The flesh is a pale orange, succulent and with a flavour reminiscent of a blend of kiwifruit, tomato and/or passion fruit. The cross-section of the fruit looks vaguely like a tomato (hence the common name of tree tomato) and the skin is markedly bitter but sweetens upon cooking (typically the flesh is scooped from the skin with a spoon prior to eating.

Solanum betaceum it is native of the Andes of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia (though it is cultivated in cultivated in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia (where it is known as terong Belanda or 'Dutch eggplant'), Kenya, Portugal, the United States, New Zealand and Venezuela). In Portugal and New Zealand it is grown as a commercial crop. Recently there has been mention of this plant as a superfood in the UK press and is now available in the UK as both seed and mature plants (it requires two years' growth before fruiting). It is not hardy and thus is recommended to be grown in pots in Northern Climes so that it can be brought indoors over winter (but it will tolerate a temperature drop of down to 6°C over winter as long as the pot is kept fairly dry).

I originally bought a plant to seek a replacement for the Bitter Tomato (a close relative) that I used in some African recipes. However, the tamarillo is much more versatile than this and can be used anywhere you would use bitter tomatoes, ordinary tomatoes or even plums in recipes. It makes excellent drinks, preserves catsups and desserts and you can see a whole range of recipes in below: