Jamun is the taste of an Indian summer. It reminds us of the freedom of childhood, of picking the dark fruit straight from the tree for free, of enjoying its intense sweetness and the satisfyingly purple stain it left on our tongues. But unlike other fruits, jamun’s sweetness is shadowed by dark moody notes. Take a sip of jamun juice and it seems like concentrated sweet black grape juice, but dilute it with water, and heavier, acid flavours surface. Chew a strip of dried jamun pulp and it has a nice fruity tang, but an odd metallic taste lingers.
Foreigners have tried to describe it in terms of other fruit: Indian blackberry, Malabar plum, damson plum. “Its fruit resembles the black grape, but has a more acid taste, and is not very good,” wrote the Mughal emperor Babar, who tended to have a dim view of Indian fruits in general. But jamun is only itself, the essence of the subcontinent’s hard soils and searing summers.
Centre of Attraction
Perhaps it was in recognition of this that ancient Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies put a giant jamun tree at the centre of the world. The Puranas divide the Cosmos into seven continents, of which the centermost was called Jambudvipa, the island of Jambu or Jamun. This is the world on which we are and it got its name from the tree that stood at its centre, like the mother tree in Avatar. This tree was said to bear fruit as large as elephants, which, when they fell, burst with juices that flowed out and became a life-giving river.
This might seem fanciful, but the jamun tree does literally give life, because it fruits so reliably. Many birds and animals like fruit bats and jackals make it an important part of their diet, and its flowers are used abundantly by bees for honey. Other trees may struggle through Indian summers, but jamun remains leafy. It is a beautiful tree, large, spreading and shady, so it is easy to understand why the British chose it as one of the main trees for the avenues of New Delhi when they were building the new capital. One of my strongest images of Delhi summer is the long pavements plastered with squashed purple fruit.
Pradip Krishen, in his wonderful Trees of Delhi guide, writes that the Delhi municipality auctions off the right to collect the fruit, so presumably not everything is left on the pavements. He also notes that two types of jamun grow in Delhi — the round bhadainya jamun or jamoa and the longer ashadiya or rai jamun. The first is Syzigium cumini, which is what is locally understood as jamun, and the second is a variant, Syzigium nervosum.
The Family Tree
Jamun comes from a large family of plants with strong personalities — cloves or Syzygium aromaticum are another cousin — and confusion usually arises from the way similar terms are used interchangeably across fruits. Jamun is also jambu which is also jambolan,the terms it tends to be known by in other parts of the world. But the term is also used for the white or pink bell-shaped fruits of Syzygium samarangense, sometimes called wax apples, which accurately describes their translucent crisp flesh and insipid taste. Sometimes these are identified as safed jamun, but this is also used for a variety of real jamun that has white flesh inside its purple skin.
All doubts can be resolved by simply biting one. Even more than taste, jamun’s nature is established by its astringent power in the mouth. Even the sweetest jamun varieties leave your palate slightly puckered. Astringency is not a taste, but a tactile sensation caused by tannins which, as food scientist Harold McGee explains, consist of “carbon rings which are just the right size to span two or more normally separate protein molecules, bond to them and hold them together.” In other words they constrict the saliva and cells of our mouth, causing that dry, tightened feeling.
Tannins can be of value in food. As McGee notes, they create “a feeling of substantial-ness”. Various health benefits have also been claimed for them — jamun is particularly used in natural medicine for diabetes (from its powdered seeds), and this might be because of its concentration of tannins.
High on Jamun
The astringency can be controlled, for example by mixing with sugar or salt. Indian children have always known this, rubbing the fruit with salt to add yet another intense flavour to jamun’s taste explosion. Ancient Sanskrit texts mention a wine called jambu asava that was made from the ripe fruit. I have steeped ripe jamun in vodka with added sugar to get a fruity drink, with a refreshingly acid bit but jamun ice cream drowns the astringency in dairy, leaving nothing distinctive other than the purple colour.
Perhaps the best use for jamun is in kala khatta. This black purple syrup uses both sugar and kala namak to tame the astringency and adds lime for extra acidity, but leaves just enough of jamun’s dark flavour to make it interesting. Most important of all, it keeps its purple staining power. Take an ice gola tightly compacted on stick, plunge it into a glass of kala khatta and slurp down the intensely flavoured cold mixture, knowing that it’s going to leave your tongue looking like a cow’s — there’s a bit of an Indian summer preserved right there.