Chayote

• 1. Introduction

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  Chayote is an edible fruiting vine of the gourd family, and in Brazil its local name doubles as a pet name. Chuchu is the Brazilian word for the fruit, and it is also a term of endearment, much like calling someone "Honey" in English. The affection suits a plant that has travelled so far from home. Chayote was first cultivated in Mesoamerica, yet today it turns up in soups in the Philippines, dumplings in Mauritius and pickles in Korea. Its flesh is pale and mild, and it is hardly a showy fruit. So how did it reach so many kitchens, why does it answer to so many names, and what strange stories have people told about it?

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• 2. Names Across Oceans

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  The Greek word σίκυος, meaning cucumber, gives chayote its genus name, Sicyos. The species name, edulis, simply means edible. Botanists once filed the plant in a different genus, Sechium, a name probably altered from the same Greek word and now considered obsolete. Modern botanists first recorded the plant in P. Browne's 1756 work, the Civil and Natural History of Jamaica. Swartz placed it in Sechium in 1800.

  The everyday English name, chayote, comes from the Spanish word chayote, which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word chayohtli. In Louisiana the fruit has a different label. There, and in Haiti, it is the mirliton, spelled mirleton or merleton in the United Kingdom. The r is often silent, so a Cajun speaker says something close to me-lay-taw. Guatemala and El Salvador call it güisquil, and Honduras calls it pataste.

  Across the eastern Caribbean, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the fruit is the christophine or christophene. That French-derived name is a reference to Christopher Columbus. A cluster of names built on the sound "cho" covers much of the rest of the world. Mauritius says chouchou, India and Sri Lanka say chow-chow, and Jamaica says chocho. The name may have begun as Pidgin English for chayote. In Nepal the fruit is Es-kus.

  In Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, people call it the choko. That word comes from Cantonese, brought by Chinese immigrants to Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century. Some speakers skip the foreign names entirely and settle on the plain English label vegetable pear. One name in this list preserves a trade route. The Philippine sayote, a close cousin of the Nahuatl original, records a journey that the next chapter follows.

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• 3. Out of Mesoamerica

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  Somewhere between southern Mexico and Honduras, farmers first cultivated chayote. The greatest genetic diversity of the plant is found in Mexico and Guatemala, which points to those two countries as its heartland. Chayote is one of dozens of foods that crossed to the Old World in the Columbian Exchange. Within the Americas it also spread widely, and many Latin American nations eventually folded it into their own cooking.

  Spain conquered the Kingdom of Naples in 1503, and that conquest tied southern Italy to the commercial and military routes that reached the American colonies. Chayote arrived in the region of Campania in the early 16th century. It spread fairly quickly but was never grown at scale. Neapolitan markets sell it as melanzana dei francesi, the aubergine of the French. Other market names are melanzana spinosa and zucchina spinosa, meaning thorny aubergine and thorny zucchini, because local varieties carry thorns.

  A further Neapolitan name, masciusce, suggests a link to the Brazilian maxixe and the Kimbundu ma'xixi, words for a thorny, tiny maroon cucumber. Today the fruit is being rediscovered as a forgotten local wild fruit. Its colonial origins remain little known to the people rediscovering it.

  Across the Pacific, the Manila galleon trade carried chayote directly from Mexico to the Philippines. It travelled among numerous vegetables, grains and fruits that arrived by the same route. In Timor-Leste the fruit is called lakeru Japones, and one speculation holds that Japanese soldiers introduced it during World War II. That explanation is only a speculation.

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• 4. The Sprawling Vine

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  A fruit from the most common variety measures 10-25 centimetres long and is roughly pear-shaped, somewhat flattened and coarsely wrinkled. The thin green skin is fused to flesh that ranges from green to white. At the centre sits a single large, flattened stone that can reach 10 centimetres long and 7 centimetres wide. Some varieties grow spiny fruits, and a single fruit can weigh up to 1.2 kilograms. The flesh tastes fairly bland, and its texture is often described as a cross between a potato and a cucumber.

  Given something to climb, the vine can rise as high as 12 metres. It will also sprawl along the ground, and as a climber it attaches itself to almost anything. The heart-shaped leaves are 10-25 centimetres wide, and tendrils grow along the stem. Male flowers appear in clusters, while the female flowers are solitary.

  Gardeners often find the plant finicky. Like other gourds it needs a great deal of room, and its roots rot easily, especially in containers. In Australia and New Zealand, though, it is an easy yard plant, trained on chicken wire or strung against a fence. In the mountains of Trinidad and Tobago, growers string it from wire lines. In Latin America it is widely cultivated, with yields running from 10 to 115 tonnes per hectare depending on the variety and the region.

  The soil should be rich in humus and well drained, and slightly acid to acid, with a pH of 4.5 to 6.5. Clay soils reduce productivity because they hold water and invite fungal pests. Chayote adapts to a wide range of climates but does best where average temperatures run 13-21 degrees Celsius (55-70 degrees Fahrenheit). It also wants at least 1500-2000 millimetres (59-79 inches) of rain a year. Frost will kill it, so gardeners in temperate regions can grow it only as an annual.

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• 5. Eating Every Part

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  Although most people picture only the fruit, the root, stem, seeds and leaves of the chayote plant are edible as well. The starchy tuberous part of the root is eaten like a potato or a yam, and it can be fried. Farmers can also feed it to pigs or cattle. The shoots and leaves go into salads and stir-fries, especially in Asia.

  The fruit itself needs no peeling before it is fried in slices or cooked. Cooks usually treat it like summer squash and cook it lightly so that it stays crisp. It can be boiled, stuffed, mashed, baked, fried, or pickled in escabeche sauce. Raw, it goes into salads or salsas, often marinated in lemon or lime juice. Some people slice it lengthwise and dip the pieces in salad dressing. The seed is edible too, and it is sometimes served cold with dressing.

  Because the flavor is so mild, chayote in soups and stews soaks up the tastes around it. Cooks use it in savory dishes, and less often in sweet ones, depending on regional tradition. Both fruit and seed are rich in amino acids and vitamin C.

  Selection matters at the market. Fresh green fruit should be firm and free of brown spots or sprouting, and smaller fruit are usually more tender. Two varieties are sold, dark green and light green. The dark green one is much more tender. The light green one develops a fibrous texture around its seed if harvest or eating is delayed.

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• 6. Asian Kitchens

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  In the Philippines, where sayote grows mostly in mountain areas such as Benguet and parts of the Cordillera Administrative Region, cooks put it in soups like sinigang and tinola. There it often stands in for upo squash. It also appears in stir-fried vegetables and chop suey. Indonesia and Malaysia share the name labu siam, literally "Siamese gourd." In Sundanese cooking it is served as lalap and goes into the dish sayur asem, while Javanese cooks add it to sayur lodeh.

  Vietnam calls the fruit su su and serves it in sautés, stir-fries and soups. In northern Thailand, where it grows in the mountains, the name is sayongte, or fak maeo, which literally means "Miao melon." Young shoots and greens are stir-fried or added to certain soups. In Burma the fruit is called Gurkha thee, the "Gurkha fruit," and it is cheap and popular.

  In West Bengal in India, people call chayote squash and cook the whole vegetable as a curry or sauté it. They also cook it with fish, eggs or mutton. It is eaten largely in the summer and rainy season, because it holds a lot of water and is a good source of vitamin C. Young branches go into saag or into shukto. In Tamil Nadu, where it is known as maerakkai, everyday dishes include sambar, kootu, poriyal, thuvayal, chutney and mor-kulambu. In Karnataka it is seeme badanekaayi, the "Bangalore brinjal," meaning the aubergine of the plateau, and it turns up in sambar and palya.

  In temperate Northeast Asia the fruit is less common. Korean cooks pickle it with vinegar and soy sauce as chayote-jangajji, or they dress it with sauces and spices as the salad chayote-muchim. In China it is called the "Buddha's palm" and is generally stir-fried. In Taiwan and southern China, growers plant it mainly for its shoots, called lóngxūcài, which are eaten along with the young leaves.

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• 7. Kitchens Beyond Asia

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  In Louisiana, Creole and Cajun cooks treat the fruit as a seasonal holiday dish, especially around Thanksgiving, in a variety of recipes. The botanist David Fairchild tried to bring chayote into wider use in the southern United States. He described the plant and his early experiences with it in a journal article in 1947. In Guatemala, güisquil comes from the Nahuatl word huitzli and refers specifically to the darker variety. The lighter, yellower one is called perulero, and the root, known as ichintal, is a seasonal delicacy. A Guatemalan version of chilaquiles called caldos sandwiches a piece of cheese between two slices of chayote, dips them in egg batter and fries them. The Dominican Republic calls the fruit tayota, and in Brazil cooks bread and fry it or add it to salads, soups, stews and soufflés.

  On Réunion, a French overseas territory near Mauritius, chou chou is served in many dishes, especially in the highlands. A popular starter is chou chou au gratin, baked in a cheese sauce. In Mauritius, where it is called sousou and grows on the high plateau, cooks mix it with beef, pork or chicken to fill steamed Chinese-style dumplings known as niouk yen or chow mai. Stems and leaves go into a bouillon served with rice. The fruit is also pickled or cooked in a salad, gratin or curry. Madagascar's Malagasy name is sôsety, and it appears in dishes such as saosisy sy sôsety, sausage and chayote, and tilapia sy sôsety.

  In the Portuguese autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores, the vegetable is popular. Madeira calls it pimpinela or pepinela, and the Azores call it caiota. Cooks there simmer it with beans in the shell, potatoes and corn cobs to accompany fish dishes, usually caldeiradas. In the Azores it also goes into puddings and jams. On the Mediterranean island of Malta, mostly hobby farmers grow it as a side-product, and it is called ċentinarja. Maltese cooks use it in thick vegetable soups or as a side vegetable.

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• 8. Legends and Rumors

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  In Australia, a persistent urban legend claimed that McDonald's apple pies were made of chokos rather than apples. The rumor grew strong enough that McDonald's emphasised that real apples go into its pies. It echoed an older belief that tinned pears were often chayote in disguise. A possible explanation lies in Australian recipes that stretch canned apples by replacing part of them with chayote. Such economies likely arose from the "mock" foods of the Depression era and from shortages of canned fruit after World War II. Apples also do not grow in many tropical and subtropical parts of Australia, while chokos grow extensively there, with vines on the fence lines and outhouses of many suburban backyards.

  The mock-apple idea has found a modern second life. Many keto diet recipes use chayote as a stand-in in high-carb apple desserts, because the fruit has a low carb count and a cooked texture much like apple.

  The strangest tale comes from the Colombian town of San Bernardo. According to a contemporary legend, chayote caused the mummification of local people who ate it heavily, because of its purported cell-regenerative properties. The mummies themselves are real, and their very well preserved skin and flesh can still be seen today.

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