Soursop (Guanabana) substitute

Substitutes for Soursop (Guanabana) with ratios

1. 2Canned Soursop Nectar or Juice

   Different texture

   Use the same amount for liquids, then reduce added sugar by about half

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

   What changes

   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.

2. 3Pineapple, Banana and Lime Blend

   Different taste

   Use 2 parts pineapple to 1 part banana, plus 1 tsp lime juice for every cup, to equal the volume of soursop pulp

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

   What changes

   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.

3. 4Cherimoya or Custard Apple

   Different taste

   Use the same amount by weight of pulp, plus 1 to 2 tsp lime juice per cup

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

   What changes

   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.

4. 5Guava Nectar or Guava Pulp

   Taste and texture differ

   Use the same amount plus lime juice to taste

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

   What changes

   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.

5. 6Fresh Soursop, and the Honest Answer

   Close match

   1 medium fruit yields about 2 cups of strained pulp

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

   What changes

   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.