Prickly pear substitutes

The closest flavour match: mild, watery sweetness with a faint melon perfume.

Best for

agua fresca, juices and smoothies, sorbet and granita, cocktails, fruit salad

Genuinely close, and the standard answer among cooks who work with both. Prickly pear is very slightly more acidic and a touch more tannic than watermelon, which is why the lime and salt matter: without them the drink tastes flabby. The colour lands as a soft pink rather than fuchsia, and there are no seeds, so you skip the straining step entirely. In a sorbet the texture is nearly identical because both fruits are mostly water.

A cactus fruit like prickly pear, with the same tiny crunchy seeds and a similar magenta flesh.

Best for

smoothies and bowls, cocktails where colour matters, sorbet, garnish and plating

The best visual and textural match available, and botanically the nearest relative, since both are cactus fruit. The tiny black seeds give the same faint crunch, and the red variety stains a drink a convincing pink-magenta. What changes is flavour intensity: dragon fruit is even milder than prickly pear, verging on bland, so it needs both lime and a little sugar to become interesting. The white-fleshed kind gives you the texture but no colour at all.

Bottled prickly pear in concentrated form, widely sold for cocktails and desert-themed drinks.

Best for

prickly pear margaritas, lemonade, cocktails, glazes and drizzles

The practical answer if a specific prickly pear flavour is the point and the fresh fruit is out of season. Because it is a sweetened syrup, you must reduce the sugar elsewhere or the drink turns cloying, and the flavour is a shade more candied and less fresh than fruit you juiced yourself. Colour is usually excellent, since these syrups are made from the magenta varieties. Read the label: some are flavoured syrups with little actual fruit, and those taste noticeably artificial.

Soft, sweet melon flesh that matches the pale green and yellow prickly pear varieties.

Best for

fruit salads, aguas frescas, smoothies, salsas

The right choice when the recipe uses green or yellow prickly pear rather than the red kind, which happens often in the Maghreb where the pale varieties dominate. Melon is sweeter and much more perfumed, so a fruit salad made with it smells strongly of melon where prickly pear is quietly neutral. Honeydew is the closer of the two because cantaloupe's musky aroma is quite assertive. Neither has the seed crunch.

A colour-first swap for recipes where the magenta is the reason the fruit is there.

Best for

cocktails and margaritas, glazes, jellies and set desserts, coloured syrups

The colour is right, sometimes better, and it holds up in a cold drink. The flavour is a bigger departure: pomegranate is properly tart and quite tannic where prickly pear is mild and soft, so a margarita made this way tastes sharper and more grown-up rather than gently fruity. The simple syrup pulls it back into balance. Best used as a colour top-up alongside watermelon juice rather than as the entire replacement.

A soft green fruit with the same profusion of small edible seeds.

Best for

green prickly pear recipes, smoothies, sorbet, fruit salads

Chosen purely for texture: kiwi's tiny black seeds behave much like prickly pear's, and the flesh purees to a similar consistency. Flavour-wise it is considerably more acidic and more aromatic, so a smoothie tastes tangy and green rather than mild and sweet, and you will want sugar. One practical warning: raw kiwi contains an enzyme that breaks down protein, so it turns dairy bitter over a few hours and prevents gelatin setting. Use it right away and use agar if you need it to set.