Chef Lupita
Agua de Chaya con Limón
Yucatán's everyday tonic of boiled chaya leaves blended with lima agria, sugar, and ice. The bright green jarra that sits on every Peninsula table from Mérida to Valladolid.
Culinary Explorer
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Agua de Saramuyo
Created by
Yucatán's sugar apple agua fresca, the cream-white flesh of the saramuyo seeded by hand, blended with cold water and a little sugar until silky. Vanilla-floral, faintly tropical, a Mérida market-day treat.
Beverages
Mexican
Special Occasion
Outdoor Dining
Quick Meal
25 min
Active Time
0 min cook•25 min total
Yield6 servings (about 2 quarts)
Saramuyo is a Yucateco fruit. The rest of Mexico calls it anona blanca or chirimoya, and the rest of the world calls it sugar apple, but in Mérida, in Valladolid, in the small towns of the peninsula, it is saramuyo and that is what you will see written in chalk on the agua fresca jarras at the mercado.
The fruit looks like a green hand grenade and gives under your thumb when it is ripe. Inside, the flesh is cream-white, segmented, soft as custard, with a vanilla-floral perfume that no other fruit quite reaches. It is in season from late summer through early fall, and the rest of the year you do not make this agua. You make agua de chaya, or agua de pitahaya, or agua de lima. Mexican grandmothers cook with what the mercado is selling today, not what looks good on a Pinterest board.
The work of this agua is in the seeding. Every segment of pulp holds a shiny black seed the size of a small bean, and every seed has to come out by hand. Crush one in the blender and the agua turns bitter. There is no recovering from it. The first time I made this, I was nineteen, traveling for the first time outside Ciudad de México, and a señora in the Lucas de Galvez market sat me down at her stall and made me seed three kilos of saramuyo before she would let me write down anything. That was the lesson. The fruit does not respect your hurry. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.
Serve it cold in tall glasses, plenty of ice, on a hot afternoon in the patio. It is not flashy. It is not loud. It is the quiet, perfumed, vanilla-soft agua of a peninsula that knows what it grows and how to drink it.
The saramuyo (Annona squamosa) is native to the Caribbean and tropical Americas and was cultivated by the Maya long before European contact, with seed evidence found at lowland Mayan archaeological sites in Yucatán and Belize. The Yucatec Maya name 'tsalmuy' is the linguistic root of the modern Spanish 'saramuyo,' a usage largely confined to the Yucatán peninsula; in central and western Mexico the same fruit is called anona or anona blanca, while the South American chirimoya is a botanical cousin (Annona cherimola). Aguas frescas as a category trace to pre-Columbian fermented and infused fruit waters, but the modern jarra-style agua de fruta, served cold over ice in market stalls, is a 19th-century evolution tied to the arrival of commercial ice production in Mexican cities.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
ripe saramuyos (sugar apples)
Quantity
4 (about 2 to 2.5 pounds total)
soft to the touch, fragrant, segments giving easily
cold filtered water
Quantity
8 cups
divided
sugar
Quantity
1/3 cup, plus more to taste
fresh lime juice
Quantity
1 tablespoon
from a Yucatecan lima if you have it
fine sea salt
Quantity
1 small pinch
ice (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| ripe saramuyos (sugar apples)soft to the touch, fragrant, segments giving easily | 4 (about 2 to 2.5 pounds total) |
| cold filtered waterdivided | 8 cups |
| sugar | 1/3 cup, plus more to taste |
| fresh lime juicefrom a Yucatecan lima if you have it | 1 tablespoon |
| fine sea salt | 1 small pinch |
| ice (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Large mixing bowls for separating pulp and seeds
- •Paring knife
- •High-powered blender
- •Fine-mesh strainer
- •2-quart glass jarra or pitcher
- •Long wooden spoon for stirring
Instructions
- 1
Choose ripe fruit
A saramuyo is ready when it gives under gentle pressure, the way a ripe avocado does, and the segmented green skin pulls apart with a fingertip. Hard saramuyo is unripe saramuyo and it will not blend silky. If yours are still firm, leave them on the counter for a day or two until they soften. Underripe fruit is a compromise this drink cannot absorb.
- 2
Open and scoop the flesh
Split each saramuyo in half with your hands or a small knife. Scoop the cream-white flesh into a wide bowl with a spoon. The pulp is studded with shiny black seeds the size of small beans. Every segment holds one or two. Discard the green skin and the fibrous core.
- 3
Seed by hand
This is the work. There is no shortcut. Pinch each segment of pulp between your thumb and finger and squeeze the seed out into a separate bowl. Drop the clean pulp into a third bowl. The seeds are mildly toxic and bitter when crushed. If even one breaks open in the blender, the whole jarra turns acrid. No me vengas con atajos. Sit at the table, put on the radio, and seed the fruit properly.
Las señoras at the Lucas de Galvez market in Mérida do this with a paring knife in one hand and a small bowl in their lap. They will tell you the same thing: pulp in one bowl, seeds in another, no shortcuts. The seeds are inedible. Throw them out. - 4
Blend in batches with cold water
Transfer the seeded pulp to a blender with 4 cups of the cold water, the sugar, the lime juice, and the pinch of salt. Pulse a few times to break the pulp down, then blend on medium for about 20 seconds. Do not over-blend. You want to dissolve the pulp into the water, not whip it. Long blending pulls air into the agua and turns it foamy and pale.
- 5
Strain through a fine sieve
Pour the blend through a fine-mesh sieve set over a pitcher, pressing the pulp through with the back of a spoon. The fibrous strands of the saramuyo will stay behind. What passes through should look like thin cream, pale ivory with the faintest green cast. Stir in the remaining 4 cups of cold water. Taste. The vanilla-floral flavor of the fruit should be forward, the sugar present but not sweet for sweetness's sake. Adjust with another tablespoon of sugar if your fruit was less ripe.
- 6
Chill and serve
Refrigerate the jarra for at least 30 minutes, until very cold. Stir well before pouring, since the pulp settles. Serve in tall glasses over plenty of ice. Drink it the day you make it. Saramuyo agua does not hold past 24 hours. The fruit oxidizes and the flavor turns flat. Así se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Buy saramuyo at a Latin or Caribbean market when it is in season, from late August through October on the peninsula. Outside that window, the fruit you find will be unripe, mealy, or imported and tired. If you cannot find it, make agua de chaya or agua de pitahaya instead. A substitution from a different fruit is a different agua, not a compromise on this one.
- •The seeds are mildly toxic and very bitter. Throw them out. Do not let curious children eat them. Do not crush them in the blender to save time. La fruta manda.
- •Yucatecan lima agria, the sour lime of the peninsula, is the right lime here if you can get it. Regular Persian lime works in a pinch. Mexican key lime is too aggressive for this delicate fruit.
- •Some cooks in Mérida add a small splash of leche evaporada to make this into a champola, the milkier version served in sorbeterias. If you go that way, use 1/2 cup of evaporated milk and reduce the water by the same amount. The champola is a sit-down drink. The agua is a market drink.
Advance Preparation
- •Seed the saramuyo pulp up to 4 hours ahead and refrigerate it in a covered bowl. Past that, the flesh begins to brown and the perfume fades.
- •The finished agua should be served the day it is made. After 24 hours the saramuyo flavor flattens and the texture separates. This is not a drink you batch for the week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 320g)
Calories
100 calories
Total Fat
0 g
Saturated Fat
0 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
0 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
30 mg
Total Carbohydrates
25 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
22 g
Protein
1 g
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