“Confit” (Pickled fruits)

You’re probably thinking of a bowl of ripe fresh fruit, cut into pieces in a nectarous juice when you heard of fruit salad, but this is not the case for the Mauritians. A typical fruit salad for us is a mixture of sour fruit, preserved in water and vinegar. Nothing to do with the sweet, candied fruits used to decorate cakes in pastries.

Young and old lovers of tart fruits which have been macerating in a big jar for a few days with a preparation based on vinegar, sugar, salt and sometimes pepper and tamarind. Mango, pineapple, java apple (jamalac), white cucumber, carambola, broad olives, bilimbi, Chinese potato, etc. The list of fruits that can be used at the moment when we are in the middle of summer is even longer than that. Almost every single fruit can be used to make “confit” depending on your taste.

The “confit” merchants can be found everywhere: on a bike in town, on a trailer on the beach or in some of a roadside stall around the island. For me, pickled fruit is a tradition every time my family and I visit my grandparent's house, we buy a large variety of “confit” and relish it together with dear ones.