Mangosteen - 'Queen' of Fruits
Published on: Saturday, February 11, 2012
By: Anthea Phillipps
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However the description of Dr Eric Mjoberg, the Curator of the Sarawak Museum for two years, from 1922-1924, in his "Forest Life and Adventures in the Malay Archipelago" (1930), is hard to beat.
"The most refined and excellent of all the fruits of the earth is the mangusteen. É The mangosteen has only one fault, it is impossible to eat enough of it, but strictly speaking perhaps that is a defect in the eater rather than in the fruit É It would be mere blasphemy to attempt to describe its wonderful taste, the culmination of culinary art for any unspoilt palate."
But the epithet "Queen of Fruits", seems to date back only to 1930, first applied by the plant explorer, David Fairchild.
The name Garcinia comes from a Dr.Laurent Garcin, attached to the Dutch East India Company, between 1720 and 1729. Describing the fruit in the early 1700's, he said, "The mangosteen is esteemed the most delicious of east Indian fruits and a great deal may be eaten fresh without any inconvenience; it is the only fruit which sick people are allowed to eat unsparingly; it is given with safety in almost every disorderÉ"
The species name 'mangostana' is taken from the older local name 'mangistan' which is still used in parts of Indonesia, though a more common local name in Sabah is 'manggis'.
The origin of the mangosteen is a mystery. The tree has almost never been found in the wild and all cultivated trees are female, (though some wild male trees were reportedly once found in Borneo), the round, dark-purple fruits developing without fertilisation.
The fruits have a prominent 4-lobed calyx at the stalk end and the woody remains of the 4 to 8-lobed stigma on top. Checking the number and size of the stigma remnants is a good way to check the number and size of seeds covered in delicious white flesh inside. The more stigma lobes, the better, for this means more smaller segments without seeds. The best fruits are slightly soft when pressed.
Fruits with a hard rind and those oozing drops of bitter yellow latex, should be avoided.
Mangosteens are most popular eaten fresh, though the chilled fresh fruit served with ice-cream or sherbet is said to be delicious, and Dr Garcin was right in extolling the fruits' health benefits.
The white pulp is cooling, refreshing and high in potassium, but in traditional medicine it was not the pulp, but the rind, that was important. The liquid from boiled, dried rinds, has long been used as a cure for dysentery and diarrhoea, (a friend who grows her own fruit swears by it!), and for skin complaints.
The yellow latex has also been used to treat pimples and acne.
Compounds in the skin called xanthones have shown anti-inflammatory, analgesic and anti-bacterial properties and studies using extracts of the rind, have shown anti-oxidant and neuro-protective effects.
Mangosteen products have now become fashionable in the US, where they are said to promote weight loss and fat reduction. These claims, however, mainly refer to other species; Garcinia atroviridis, or 'asam gelugor', originally from India, but which has long been popular in Peninsular Malaysia, particularly Penang, as an ingredient in soups and curries, and another Indian species, Garcinia cambogia or 'goraka', much used in Sri Lanka in fish curries.
None of these claims have been fully tested in human trials but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence and studies have shown that extracts of the rinds of 'asam gelugor', "caused weight loss in rats due the presence of hydroxycitric acid, an inhibitor of fatty acid and cholesterol synthesis".
Hydroxycitric acid, itself, however, is toxic in large quantities.
Neither of these species is well-known in Sabah, but Borneo does have several wild mangosteens of its own, though they have been little studied.
Most have sour, acid fruits, but even these have their uses.
In Donggongon market in Penampang, for example, you can often find the dried dark-red rinds of another smaller mangosteen.
This is 'takob-akob' or 'kandis asam', (Garcinia parvifolia), a small tree with thin-skinned, but very pretty, small pinky-red fruits with a thin, sour rind, and white pulp which varies from sweet to sour in taste.
The tree is often planted in kampongs along the west coast and in the interior, especially around Ranau, and the dried skins (sometimes the ripe fruits as well) are often sold at local markets.
This is one of several different 'buah asam', which are mixed into soups, particularly those with fish, for the sour, slightly astringent flavour they provide.
Nearly all Garcinia species produce a characteristic yellow latex and almost equally well-known as the mangosteen, at one time, would have been Gamboge tree (Garcinia hanburyii), which was tapped for its latex as the source of the natural yellow paint gamboge, though today this has been more or less superseded by synthetic dyes.
This species, and others, were also important in providing the saffron-coloured pigment for dying the robes of Buddhist monks.
The Gamboge tree is not native to Borneo either, but grows in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
In fact the name of the country of Cambodia comes from 'gamboge', indicating how important it was in the past.
Burkill, a former Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, in his "Economic Products of the Malay Peninsula"(1966), says it "É..makes the golden-yellow ink of Siam (Thailand) which is used for writing on locally made books of black paper.
A little is used in Europe in water colour painting and more in making a golden spirit varnish, or gold lacquer for coating metals, known as pearground laquer, used in association with gold dust.
Gambodge paint is an emulsion in water". The commercial value of this fascinating species has greatly diminished over time, however, and it never seems to have been introduced to Sabah.
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