I have a jar of Indian "gooseberry pickle" in front of me. It's
yellowish-green spherical fruit about an inch across in oil and
spices. The fruit are the same colour right through, with a
slightly crunchy texture like pickled walnuts. There is one stone
in the middle of each fruit, pear-shaped with six sharp longitudinal
symmetric ridges and three small tufts at 120-degree angles at the
bottom (attached to three of the ridges). The fruit (whole) and the
spicy oil are the only ingredients.

It's labelled in five languages. One is Urdu which would presumably
give me the real scoop if I could read it. The others:

English: gooseberry
French: groseille a maquereau
German: stachelbeere
Italian: uva spina

No Linnaean binomial.

So what the heck is it? Pickled baby triffid?

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Jack Campin - bogus address a écrit :
> I have a jar of Indian "gooseberry pickle" in front of me. It's
> yellowish-green spherical fruit about an inch across in oil and
> spices. The fruit are the same colour right through, with a
> slightly crunchy texture like pickled walnuts. There is one stone
> in the middle of each fruit, pear-shaped with six sharp longitudinal
> symmetric ridges and three small tufts at 120-degree angles at the
> bottom (attached to three of the ridges). The fruit (whole) and the
> spicy oil are the only ingredients.
>
> It's labelled in five languages. One is Urdu which would presumably
> give me the real scoop if I could read it. The others:
>
> English: gooseberry
> French: groseille a maquereau
> German: stachelbeere
> Italian: uva spina
>
> No Linnaean binomial.
>
> So what the heck is it? Pickled baby triffid?
>

I don't know, but from the description it is not what it advertises to
be, in fact in french, english and german it pretends to be 'Ribes
uva-crispa' which is patently not the description of the fruit you give.

Perhaps it could be fruits of the indian gooseberry or amla :
'Phyllanthus emblica' of which I can't get a good description at this time.
--
Greetings, Salutations,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald,
Chris CII, Rennes, France

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
> I have a jar of Indian "gooseberry pickle" in front of me. It's
> yellowish-green spherical fruit about an inch across in oil and
> spices. The fruit are the same colour right through, with a
> slightly crunchy texture like pickled walnuts. There is one stone
> in the middle of each fruit, pear-shaped with six sharp longitudinal
> symmetric ridges and three small tufts at 120-degree angles at the
> bottom (attached to three of the ridges). The fruit (whole) and the
> spicy oil are the only ingredients.
>
> It's labelled in five languages. One is Urdu which would presumably
> give me the real scoop if I could read it. The others:
>
> English: gooseberry
> French: groseille a maquereau
> German: stachelbeere
> Italian: uva spina
>
> No Linnaean binomial.
>
> So what the heck is it? Pickled baby triffid?
>

This doesn't seem to match your description:

<http://bhakshanam.wordpress.com/2006/06/13/uppillitta-nellikka-salted-gooseberries/>

http://www.aayisrecipes.com/wp-conte...e%20hindi1.jpg

http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/im...ikaya/amla.jpg

I ma coming up with amla, nellikka, nellikaya... The ridges
don't seem that pronounced though. Maybe something related
but not this????

--
Jean B.

>> I have a jar of Indian "gooseberry pickle" in front of me. It's
>> yellowish-green spherical fruit about an inch across in oil and
>> spices. The fruit are the same colour right through, with a
>> slightly crunchy texture like pickled walnuts. There is one stone
>> in the middle of each fruit, pear-shaped with six sharp longitudinal
>> symmetric ridges and three small tufts at 120-degree angles at the
>> bottom (attached to three of the ridges). The fruit (whole) and the
>> spicy oil are the only ingredients.
>> So what the heck is it? Pickled baby triffid?
> This doesn't seem to match your description:
> http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandi/im...ikaya/amla.jpg

Actually that one probably does. The pips are almost perfect hexagons
in cross-section (I should have used a different word than "ridge"
perhaps), and the thing in the picture is consistent with that. The
colour of the pickle (military yellow-green) presumably comes from the
spices, mainly turmeric.

I can't find a good botanical drawing of the seed on the web. The tufts
at the bottom are very distinctive (and there aren't many seeds with
obvious threefold symmetry, the only other one I can think of is the
coconut).

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
Jack Campin: 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland | tel 0131 660 4760
<http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> for CD-ROMs and free | fax 0870 0554 975
stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, & Mac logic fonts | mob 07800 739 557

Hi,
I am an Indian and think that
your description matches only with amla alone.