Breadnut or Artocarpus Camansi, is the ancestor of breadfruit, the more widely known green football (soccer-ball) shaped starchy tropical fruit found across the warm regions of the world. Unlike the breadfruit, the breadnut is full of seeds. When ripe the fruit softens and falls to the ground. That’s where I found this one, under a tree on my parents’ farm. In the photo below you can see the very soft fruit, with its soft green spiny exterior. The seeds, to the right, comprise up to 50% of the weight of the fruit and can be easily removed from the ripe flesh.
Drop the seeds into hot salted water and give them a boil for about 10 minutes, then peel the thin shell off (once they have cooled a bit) to reveal delicious chestnut like goodness. This can be mashed with butter, put into a stuffing, glazed with sugar syrup to make “breadnut glacee” or blended with some rich stock to make a filling and delicate soup. They can also be roasted for an even more intense flavour. If you live in the tropics or run across a breadnut sometime, it is worth experimenting with! Fruits are also harvested green by pulling them off the tree and cooked seeds and all in soups and stews. Let me know if you have ever eaten breadnut seeds and what you made with them.