Love It or Hate It, This Is the Forbidding Fruit

Whatever the odoriferous riot elsewhere in the steamy climes of Southeast Asia, Singapore as a nation is ruthlessly sweet-smelling. The air in most public buildings is pumped through banks of hyperefficient air conditioners, filtering and refiltering the air until a visitor might easily forget that this is the tropics. So how, then, to explain the durian?

Virtually unknown outside Asia, the durian is hailed here as the King of Fruits, a spiky, soccer-ball-sized globe beloved by Singaporeans for its sweet, custardy yellow flesh. The durians taste, texture and shape are all distinctive. But what makes the fruit truly unmistakable is the odora smell so overpowering that generations of Singaporeans have struggled to find a single description that fits.

Among the charitable, printable comparisons: overripe cheese. Rotting fish. Unwashed socks. A city dump on a hot summers day. Historians report that Sir Stamford Raffles, who established Singapore as a British trading post in 1819, held his nose and ran in the other direction if he caught even a whiff of the dreaded fruit. Another former British governor likened the stench to carrion in custard.

And yet the three million people of this prosperous island city-state cannot get enough of it. According to a popular saying, durians have the smell from hell and the taste from heaven. Another bit of durian lore [...] when the durians come down from the trees, the sarongs [?] come off [...] refers to the fruits legendary powers as an aphrodisiac.


Maybe this is our little way of rebelling, said a Singapore businessman, using his teeth to pull the tender fruit from around one of the huge seed pods found at the core of a durian. In Singapore, the Government has given us a nice life. But there is not so much freedom. So maybe we create a little trouble by eating the smelly fruit.

Durians are a costly habit. They are among the worlds most expensive fruits, about $4 a pound at the height of the season, which ends later this month. The best are imported from Malaysia and Thailand, although a few fruit-bearing durian trees are still left standing in Singapores modern-day forest of concrete and steel.