Hairshirt on my Tongue

Kumquats: Bitter, dwarf tangerine or somehow useful? – Bitter like a kumquat

Kumquat’s prevalent flavor might be better thought of as sour than bitter but why quibble, when we agree in substance the flavor might be closer to hairshirt than cashmere. Sour and bitter make up half of the traditional taste palate (recent research suggests both umami – meaty flavor - and fatty acids are distinguishable flavor components). With the prevalence of sweet and salty in the modern diet especially with prepared/convenience/snack food, experiencing sour or bitter on the tongue can seem a bit like atoning for sins.

Unlike oranges but for the sake of comparison, like apples, the skin of kumquats is edible. The outer portion of a kumquat is thin, oily, pithy, chewy, aromatic - despite its size the skin smells like a dozen oranges condensed into a single wee oblong orange. Biting into a kumquat isn’t as refreshing as eating a segment from a freshly peeled navel orange, the first sensation is surprisingly tart. Despite the fact many first time tasters want to know how to or if you peel the fruit, it isn’t the skin that is harsh, it is the flesh of the kumquat– it makes a lemon juice seem sweet – that is sour, astringent, and to many, many people, unpleasant. To others, especially if you like the sensation from bitters/tonic/Campari, kumquats can really get the gustatory juices flowing.

It isn’t just the Freaky Friday – the skin is sweet/the flesh is bitter – nature of the fruit alone that makes kumquats such an odd fruit, everything is a bit odd. The fruit is Chinese in origin (Its name translates as golden orange) but most the kumquats that reach the stores are of the japonica variety. So named because of the hybridization done in Japan; a mountainous country not especially hospitable to citrus productions but kumquats which grow on a fruit-bearing evergreen shrub are rather impervious to the cold.

Kumquats are also unique in the fact that people really don’t cook with them. Alice Waters seems to have collected the most kumquat recipes in her cookbooks – the most practical instruction directs cooks to slice the kumquats into little wheels then candy them in sugar to use as decorative garnishes. Outside of the Chez Panisse Cookbooks, recipes for kumquats are almost exclusively marmalade or on the savory side, for duck. Occasionally a faddish book or magazine will print a recipe but publishing a recipe for kumquats is like hyping a book you haven't actually read, it is all for show.

The fact that kumquats aren’t as popular as other citrus, even other bitter citrus like key or kaffir lime, is a pretty good indicator that the taste isn’t for everyone. Solipsism factors into taste, no one can convince you despite every sensory perception to the contrary something is actually good: Only you can make that determination. Kumquats are bitter and sour, but like the aphorism advising to take the bitter with the sweet, sometimes embracing the bitter can help you appreciate the sweet.