We planned a visit to the beautiful Tower Hill Botanical Garden just north of Worcester, and that provided a perfect opportunity to bring about World Peace, or at least some small resolution. You see, a few days ago I created something of an international incident. I feel terrible about it, and have committed to resolving the issue as quickly and neatly as possible.

We had dined at a favorite Chinese-Japanese restaurant in Marshfield, MA, and as we were leaving I spied an interesting food product in the fridge. Kom, our host,explained that it is a special fruit that he had acquired in Philadelphia, but he was unable to communicate much more than that in English. Kom's English isn't great, but my Chinese is worse, so I snapped a photo and resolved to investigate. I posted the photo to Facebook.com/FoodiePilgrim, with a plea to identify it.

Soon it was seen by hundreds of foodies, with identifications ranging from the sweet Jackfruit and Buddha Fruit to Guanabana and Durian, the scary King of Fruits. In the end, it seemed to be one of a couple of members of the custard-apple family with which I was utterly unfamiliar. Sides became entrenched: is it cherimoya or soursop? The solution, of course, is to find one of each and compare them directly.

When I need to find an unusual food from a far corner of the globe, I always go to Worcester first. You can go around the world without leaving Worcester.

I had to buy some spices anyway, so I started at Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace. Ed knows about all manner of unusual foods, even those that have never seen the blue waters of the Mediterranean. After ascertaining that these tropical specimens had no known African provenance (which would send me to Danco Foods), he pointed me to Compare Foods, an Hispanic supermarket on South Main Street with a legendary produce section.

Compare had all sorts of intriguing produce, but nothing that looked to my untrained eye like a Soursop or a Cherimoya. I showed the photo to an employee, and he exclaimed "Guanabana!" (the accent falls on the second a). He brought me to the canned juices, and sure enough the Guanabana Juice can had a picture that looked like mine. Swell. Not only had I not found the fruit I wanted, but I had added a third candidate to my quest...I was going backward!

My next stop was the Ha Tien Vietnamese Market, where I had often shopped when I lived in Worcester. I felt like a detective, except instead of showing earnest shopkeepers a photo of a suspect, I was showing them a photo of a cut-up tropical fruit of the custard-apple family. The lady at Ha Tien affirmed that it indeed looked like a "mang cau", or soursop, but she did not have a fresh one to sell me. I did buy a nifty little sesame-seed covered pastry to nourish me for the travails ahead.

I felt I was on the right track, so I went up Main South to another Vietnamese market. The Mekong market, like most Vietnamese markets, has plenty of fish, but the produce can be tricky. I showed my photo to a fellow working at the registers, and he brought me to a freezer full of that dangerous Durian fruit. He could see my dismay, and said something that must have been "Wait a minute! Down here!" He dug through the big spiky brown Durians and deep in the bottom of the freezer he triumphantly pulled up not one but three "mang cau". Well, that looked like my suspect, alright. At least, it looked like the Wikipedia image of the Soursop.

I still had the Cherimoya to deal with, and that late-entry the Guanabana. While I was there, I found another awesome tropical fruit. You know, you never see these in the annals of the Tiki Cocktails, which are supposed to be all about rum and tropical fruits. But these are real tropical fruits just begging to be put to gainful employment in the cocktail circuit. This one is a Dragon Fruit. It looks like the top of a torch at Disney World. I must find a use for it!

While I was uncovering clues at the Mekong Market, I got some help from a young lass whose name I never got. She took up the chase like Miss Junior Gumshoe 2013 and really went at it. It is to her efforts that I was able to eliminate that late-comer Guanabana from the list of suspects, or more accurately she identified Guanabana as the Spanish name for the... Soursop!

But what about the Cherimoya? I never did find it, so my mission is not yet completed.

Here's the frozen soursop from Mekong Market, thawed and cut.  It was delicious but the texture was spongy, probably from being frozen. It certainly could be the mystery fruit shown above.

I still do not know. Maybe the Cherimoya looks the same on the inside. I must get my hands on the elusive Cherimoya!

I have great incentive to uncover this rare and wonderful tropical fruit. I have been reading a lot of (Hartford's own) Mark Twain, and on our upcoming railroad adventure, I expect to read a great deal more of his work. I may even come upon his comments written while on assignment in the Sandwich Islands for the Sacramento Union newspaper in which he called the cherimoya "the most delicious fruit known to men."

Stay tuned!