Salak
The things you encounter when looking for
information on certain topics boggles the
mind. I set out to correct the lack of information on this
delicious fruit in the
database, so - not unlike most noders and nodettes, I imagine - I started out by doing some
searches on the word '
salak'.
Google came up with eight results, at which point I started to
worry a bit. Hhmm, so information is probably a bit
scarce on the
subject...
Next stop was of course an
advanced search on
AltaVista. So I did a search on '
salak OR snakefruit' and checked the "One result per Web site"-box. That's better:
On the other hand, most of the
results are usually
rubbish when confronted with such a
discrepancy between Google and AltaVista. Oh well, guess I'm going to have to
dig through some
dirt...
One result kind of startled me and so I would like to share it with you before getting down to
business. On the third results page thrown up by AltaVista, I encountered the following
entry:
28. Salak
PLACESNAMED.COM Geographic Encyclopedia. Goto page for: New! Type name & press {Enter} Home Page Up to Index About Us Contact Us...
URL: www.placesnamed.com/S/a/salak.asp
Translate More pages from this site Related pages
So in my innocence I open the page in a new browser window and get the following result:
Salak
- Salak is the 45,616th most popular last name (surname) in the United States; frequency is 0.000%; percentile is 85.182 [SourceCBN]
- Salak, South Carolina, United States [Place] is in Greenwood County; location is 34°9'29"N 82°12'26"W [SourceGSP]
Okay... This was not what I was after, exactly, but still, it does kind of
tie in with the node
title, right?
Salak (snakefruit) - botanical
So, down to business. The
plant that
bears the salak fruit is the
Salacca edulis of the family
Arecaceae1, more commonly known as the
salak palm. This plant is a
subterranean branching
palm, which means that the plant can be
propagated by separating and
transplanting individual
branches. Further information on the plant is hard to get, and the plant I have
growing in my
living room has not yet
matured enough to be able to
describe the plant from that
specimen. At the moment it consists of only one
leaflet which is about 25
centimeters long, shaped like a
V. The
edge of the
leaf is rather
sharp and sports some small
spikes (not really the same as
thorns), as does the single
stem that the leaf is attached to. Not a very
friendly little plant, now is it?
The fruit
The salak is called snakefruit in
English for a good
reason. The
skin of the fruit looks exactly like the skin of a
snake and is made up of reddish-brown
scales. Whether the
texture of the scales is the same as that of the skin of snakes I can't tell, never having
touched a snake
2.
The fruit grows in
clusters at the
base of the plant.
The
shape of the fruit is somewhat
round, with a small
tip at the
top end. The tip is the place to start
peeling the fruit. Just
pinch the tip between
thumb and
finger and
pull it
off. That should get you a start for peeling off the rest.
The fruit itself is a
creamy yellow color and has a
sweet,
acidic taste. The texture is somewhat dependant on the
quality of the
batch you laid your hands on. It can range from
crumbly to
crisp and
crunchy and from very
dry (as in "give me something to
drink quick before I can't open my
mouth anymore") to somewhat
moist. I prefer the crunchy, moist types myself.
This is one of those fruits you have to taste if you ever get the chance, just like
manga (or
mango as you English people prefer to call them),
durian (a must!),
mangistan and
rambutan.
Sources:
http://www.placesnamed.com/S/a/salak.asp - Err...
http://www.capetrib.com.au/salak.htm - what little information on the salak I could find
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X0451e/X0451e03.htm - information on tropical palms
Gotta love the html symbol reference
1 Going out on a limb here, the site at http://www.payer.de/cifor/cif0103.htm gives a somewhat different (or not? suggestions?) classification:
2 Well, consciously anyway. The snake that slid over my toes when I was a little boy freaked me out so completely that I can't recall having had any feeling in my body left during and after that at all for a couple of hours.
April 12, 2001