Cacao — The Fruit Everyone Knows the Product of, and Almost No One Has Tasted

Everyone has eaten chocolate; almost no one has tasted the fruit it comes from. Inside this thick, ridged pod isn't chocolate at all, but rows of seeds — the actual cacao beans — each wrapped in a soft, white, faintly sweet-tart pulp that has nothing in common with the finished product. The pods are picked ripe and don't develop further once harvested, so what you're checking for is simply vibrant colour (yellow, orange, or red depending on the pod) and a fragrant, tropical smell. To open one, whack it firmly against a hard surface or crack it with a heavy knife until the shell splits, then pull out a section and suck the pulp straight off the bean — it tastes closer to lychee or tamarind than anything chocolatey. The beans themselves are not eaten raw; they're bitter and best set aside if you want to try roasting or fermenting them into something closer to actual chocolate.