Reference point
Open a perfectly ripe jackfruit and smell as soon as the first pod is pulled out.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Harshly sweet, with notes of alcohol and banana, carrying very far. One opened jackfruit fills a whole house within minutes.
All of it comes from esters — the same group that builds the smell of almost every ripe fruit. Esters are the common language of ripeness, and jackfruit speaks that language louder than any other species.
When overripe, the alcoholic note turns into a solvent note, and that is the line between fragrant and spoiled. The line is narrow, crossed within a day, and the nose detects it before the eye sees anything.
How to smell it
Open a perfectly ripe jackfruit and smell as soon as the first pod is out. Leave one pod in the open for a day and smell again — the solvent note has come through. Comparing the two is how you learn to recognise overripe fruit by nose.
Why this one is hard
Because the intensity is so great that the nose saturates quickly. Smell for three seconds, turn away, wait half a minute, smell again. Smelling continuously leaves you unable to perceive anything after ten seconds.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Ripe jackfruit
Fermented family
Jackfruit is pure ester, so it is only sweet and winey; durian also has sulphur compounds, giving notes of onion and egg.
Scientific note
Ripe jackfruit is rich in esters such as isoamyl acetate and ethyl hexanoate, the same group that makes the smell of banana and pineapple. They form during ripening, when fatty acids react with alcohols through the action of enzymes. That is why green jackfruit has almost no smell: no esters have been made yet.
In Vietnamese life
Jackfruit is one of the most divisive fruits once taken out of Southeast Asia, together with durian. Interestingly, the molecules behind the controversy belong to a very common group, the esters — what makes people react is not an unusual compound but concentration.