Genipapo

And how Cesar Costa of São Paulo's Corrutela attains a bright blue colorant from it.

Genipapo at Belém do Pará’s Ver-O-Peso market. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

Blue is a relatively rare color in food, at least in a natural form. There are blueberries of course, as well as blue corn in Mesoamerica and blue potatoes in the Andes and Adirondacks. There are the butterfly pea flowers that make a bright blue tea, and let’s not forget the algal blue of spirulina. In the Amazon, there is one fruit, genipapo, that can make a blue dye, though it takes a little work.

I caught the tail end of genipapo season in the Brazilian state of Pará last month. I first noticed a few of the brownish-green fruits, withered in a pile in Belém do Pará’s Ver-O-Peso market. They were well past their prime and looked like dried figs with the smell of ripe banana. Days later I came upon a tree elsewhere in the Pará state where the fruits were still in the process of falling off the tree.