What Does Jackfruit Taste Like?

Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) is a huge, bumpy green fruit grown across South and Southeast Asia. The same fruit is sold at two very different stages. Ripe, it is a sweet dessert fruit with yellow, chewy flesh. Picked young, it is a near-flavorless vegetable that shreds like pulled pork.

Ripe jackfruit and the Juicy Fruit comparison

Ripe jackfruit is sweet and loudly fruity. People name banana, pineapple and mango, and many say it smells like fruit gum. The flesh is firm and slightly chewy rather than juicy.

A study from the Leibniz Institute in Freising found 53 odorants in jackfruit pulp. By odor activity value (the amount present divided by the smallest amount people can smell), one fruity ester, ethyl 3-methylbutanoate, was far ahead of everything else. Ethyl butanoate and two malty aldehydes, 3-methylbutanal and 2-methylpropanal, followed. A model built from 35 of the compounds fully mimicked jackfruit.¹ A separate study named 3-methylbutyl acetate as one marker of the pulp.² That is isoamyl acetate, the classic banana-candy ester.

Those esters are why ripe jackfruit gets compared to Juicy Fruit. Wrigley treats its formula as a trade secret and has described the gum only as lemon, orange, pineapple and banana notes.⁴ There is no evidence it uses jackfruit. The two share fruity esters such as isoamyl acetate and ethyl butanoate, which are also the core of bubblegum.

Young jackfruit tastes of almost nothing

Young jackfruit is harvested before its starch turns to sugar. It tastes neutral, and its fibers flake into strands that look and chew like shredded meat.³ That neutrality is the whole point. In a jackfruit taco or barbecue sandwich, every bit of flavor comes from the sauce and seasoning.

Here is the honest limit. Jackfruit is not a protein source. USDA lists raw ripe jackfruit at about 1.7 g of protein per 100 g.⁶ A jackfruit "pulled pork" is meaty in texture only.

Working with it

• Season young jackfruit hard. It brings no savory depth of its own. Smoke, browning notes and umami sources do the work meat would. Fat helps the seasoning cling.
• Count the brine. Canned young jackfruit is often packed in salted water, and some brands add an acid such as lime juice. Rinse it, and include that salt in your sodium budget.
• Do not let a ripe jackfruit flavor turn into banana. Too much isoamyl acetate and it reads as banana candy. The malty aldehydes and the pineapple-like esters keep it jackfruit.
• Heat costs you the top. The fruity esters are volatile. In baked goods or hot-filled products, add the flavor late or dose up.
• It is not durian. The fruits look alike, but jackfruit has no sulfurous note. Researchers comparing it with cempedak, a close relative, found that cempedak's sulfury, oniony note is absent in jackfruit.⁵ See durian for the sulfurous one, and mango and soursop for other creamy tropicals.