The WHAT pickle?

Eurasians love pickle eaten with the meal that includes steaming hot rice. The favourite is often salt fish pickle, and the acar timun (pickle made with cucumber, cabbage, onions, cauliflower and/or carrot sticks) is standard fare at most meals enjoyed at home.

But the absolute zenith of pickles has always been roumenia pickle, a well-loved dish that usually makes an appearance twice a year (the fruit becomes available only in April and November). And why? Because the little fruit (see, below) has a superb and utterly unique taste, close to but beyond the common unripe and green mango. Sour for sure, but with sweetness and a faint scent of its own.

Eurasian children, in particular, loved eating the ripe fruit raw, when these were discarded from the pile of properly firm green fruit deemed suitable for pickle making. When allowed to ripen fully the fruit turns yellowish-green, and the full aroma and sweet-sour taste is evident the moment you take your first juicy bite. The fruit’s core, which holds a bitter seed, is a striking bright magenta in colour.

This roumenia fruit is extinct in Singapore, sometimes available in Malacca and the northern parts of the Malay Peninsula -- where it is also known as buah Rumia (Rumia fruit) or buah Rembunia (Rembunia fruit). It is still in abundance in Thailand where it is commonly recognized by the natives as maprang, mapring or dong. In Java it is called buah Gandaria (Gandaria fruit).

There are two varieties of roumenia, the Latin names being Bouea microphylla and Bouea macrophylla. Both can be used in pickle making. Pickle makers today wistfully ask travellers to keep an eye out for this rare fruit and shamelessly put in orders for ten kilos at a time.

A clever Eurasian housewife would normally purchase sufficient roumenia fruits during the November harvest to save and serve at Christmas, where the pickled dish went perfectly with the festive fare. The fruit was also highly sought after during the April seasons, where hundreds of roumenia pickles would be served to hungry diners in the Easter celebrations.

Besides the famed pickle, another favourite treatment of the fruit was simply to soak them in bottles with salt water. After about two weeks of soaking, the briny fruit can be eaten like a karna (or sweetmeat), a type of manisan in Indonesia. Rarest of all would be roumenia kasoonda, the pickle made with a heavy hand on the mustard -- rare because not everyone liked the mustardy taste, and the fruit had to be carefully kept for the pickle that mostly everyone loved best.

If you're interested to learn how prepare the roumenia pickle, simply follow the steps in this article.