Soursop (guanabana) substitutes

Unsweetened strained soursop pulp sold in flat frozen packets in Latin, Caribbean and West African grocers, usually labelled guanabana.

Best for

soursop juice and punch, ice cream and sorbet, smoothies and batidas, mousse and cheesecake, agua fresca

This is not a compromise, it is the ingredient. The pulp is picked ripe, sieved and frozen, so the flavour is very close to fresh and often better than an underripe fruit shipped thousands of miles. Two things differ: the fibre and seeds have already been removed, so you cannot use it where a recipe wants pieces of fruit, and it is usually unsweetened, so taste before you add sugar. Thaw it in the fridge, not the microwave, since heat dulls the perfume noticeably.

Sweetened guanabana nectar in cans or cartons, stocked in the international aisle of most large supermarkets.

Best for

punch and rum punch, juice, popsicles and sorbet, cocktails, jelly and glazes

Reliable, cheap and everywhere, and the flavour is recognisably soursop. The catch is that nectar is typically 15 to 20 percent fruit with a lot of added sugar and sometimes citric acid, so a drink made with it tastes sweeter and flatter than one made from pulp, with the creamy quality mostly missing. Cut the recipe's sugar roughly in half, add lime juice to sharpen it, and stir in a couple of tablespoons of coconut milk or evaporated milk per cup if you want the body back. Poor choice for ice cream on its own, since the low fruit content makes it icy.

A three-ingredient blend built from supermarket fruit to hit soursop's flavour profile from several directions at once.

Best for

smoothies, juice and punch, sorbet and ice cream, mousse, baking

Better than any single fruit and worth the extra minute. Pineapple supplies the tropical top note and the acid, banana supplies the soft creamy body and the faint musky sweetness, and lime sharpens the whole thing so it does not read as banana smoothie. Add a tablespoon of heavy cream or coconut milk per cup for ice cream or mousse. What it will not give you is soursop's distinctive slightly floral, almost fermented edge, so the result tastes like a very good tropical blend rather than a mistakable copy. Use fresh or canned pineapple in juice, not in heavy syrup.

A close botanical relative with green scaled skin and sweet, creamy white flesh, sold in Latin markets and some supermarkets in winter.

Best for

ice cream and sorbet, mousse and desserts, smoothies, eating fresh

The nearest relation and the closest texture match: the same soft, slightly granular, custard-like pulp with big black seeds you spoon out. Flavour is where it parts company. Cherimoya is markedly sweeter and rounder, tasting of banana, pear and vanilla, and it has almost none of soursop's acidity, which is what the word sour in the name is doing. So a cherimoya version of a soursop dessert tastes creamy and pleasant but slack. One to two teaspoons of lime juice per cup of pulp closes most of that gap. Sugar apple, sweetsop and atemoya behave the same way.

Sweet, strongly perfumed pink or white guava puree or nectar, widely stocked and inexpensive.

Best for

punch and juice, sorbet, cocktails, glazes and jelly

A good choice when the point of the soursop was simply that the drink tastes tropical. Guava is a similar strength of perfume and works well in a rum punch, but it is a completely different aroma, muskier and more floral, and pink guava will turn a pale drink coral. It also lacks soursop's creamy weight. Mix it half and half with banana or coconut milk if the recipe was aiming at something rich. Not a good idea in a dessert where soursop was the identifiable flavour.

The whole fruit, which appears occasionally in Caribbean, Latin and Asian markets in season, usually rock hard and needing a few days to ripen.

Best for

juice, ice cream, eating with a spoon, punch

Worth stating plainly: nothing tastes exactly like soursop, and every option on this list is a compromise. If the recipe is built on soursop, chase the frozen pulp first and the fresh fruit second. Buy it firm and leave it on the counter until it yields to a thumb like a ripe avocado, which can take three to five days, then refrigerate and use within two days. Halve it, scoop the pulp, and squeeze it through your fingers or a sieve with a little water to separate the tough fibre and the large black seeds, which are discarded and never eaten or blended.