Mouse Melons

Image Gallery ROB CARDILLO

A tiny melon from south of the border has been creating a buzz in the farmer’s markets. Its unique flavor, with hints of cucumber and green fava bean, its pest-free and rampant habit of growth, not to mention its huge productivity, all conspire to recommend this unusual vine to home gardeners looking for something new to add to their menus.

The melon’s most common name in Spanish is “sandíita” (little watermelon), but it has a slew of other monikers in local dialects and Native American languages, many of which translate as “mouse melon.” These colloquial names are not surprising because the fruits resemble superminiaturized watermelons, the perfect scale for a mouse-sized picnic.

The scientific name of this plant is Melothria scabra. It is native to Mexico and Central America, and was first described scientifically in 1866 by the French botanist Charles Victor Naudin. I should add in the same breath that Naudin’s Latin nomenclature for the melon is not engraved in stone because there is quite a bit of argument as to where this plant belongs by botanical classification, especially because it has very close relatives in Africa.

If botanists have been late in coming to terms with the mouse melon, Native American peoples have not. It has been a staple of Mexican and Central American diets since pre-Columbian times, hence its great array of names in indigenous languages. These people also use the melon in nonculinary ways, including in medicine, yet little of this information can be found in mainstream literature.

Few, if any, Mexican cookbooks written for North Americans include recipes on how to use mouse melons, yet seeds are readily available in the United States. Now is a good time for our cooks to catch up, especially vegetarian cooks looking for exciting, new ingredients.

Mouse melons are terrific in stir-fries; they can be pickled just like French gherkins, eaten raw in salads or put up like Polish dill pickles. They also can be chopped and added to salsas for extra texture and flavor.

In an effort to popularize the fruit, several seed companies have coined new names, including “cucamelon,” “Mexican sour gherkin,” “cuka-nut” and, in France, “concombre à confire” (preserving cucumber). None of these names really captures the local color of “sandia de raton” (mouse melon in Spanish), but at least, if you do an Internet search, knowing more than one name for the plant can help you find someone who is selling seed for Melothria scabra. Personally, I vote for the name mouse melon. I can visualize the little melons in a Mexican version of a Beatrix Potter story, which may be one reason why children adore them.