papaya

Papaya is the soft tropical fruit people buy for breakfast bowls, fruit salad, or a dessert that needs sweetness without much effort. By our assessment, its best feature is the ripe flesh: smooth, fragrant, and easy to eat once the skin and seeds are out of the way. The catch is that papaya is unforgiving when it is underripe, and the flavour can feel flat or resinous instead of lush. In practice it is a fruit that depends heavily on ripeness and handling, so it can be pleasant one day and disappointing the next. Compared with melon it is less watery and more perfumed, and compared with mango it is usually milder. The Astrina catalogue files papaya under Papayas, which matches its place among everyday tropical fruits.