Fruits & berries
Coconut
Cocos nucifera
The resource-fruit of the tropics — water, flesh, milk, oil, butter: everything is used, nothing is wasted.
Traditional use
Known as 'the tree of a hundred uses', the coconut has fed, hydrated and sheltered tropical peoples for millennia. The coconut palm travels with Pacific navigators, its nuts floating from island to island to sprout. Water, flesh, fibre, shell: every part has its use.
What science observes
Coconut flesh offers a fat of a particular kind, rich in medium-chain triglycerides the body quickly turns into energy. Its virgin oil holds heat without going rancid, its butter — the whole flesh ground — brings fibre and minerals, its water is a natural isotonic drink. Stable, versatile, deeply nourishing.
In the kitchen
We keep virgin oil for gentle cooking and raw desserts, coconut butter to bind a cream or icing, and fresh flesh by the spoon or grated. Coconut cream whips into a plant chantilly; the water refreshes as it is.
Resonance
Coconut is the quiet abundance of the tropics — the feeling of travel, of sun, of sweetness without sugar. A fruit that gives everything, generously.