A few months ago, I found some fuyu persimmons at a nearby Mexican tienda. I'd had persimmons once before, but didn't remember much about them.[1] So I bought a few and took them home to try. My main reason for doing this, though, is that I wanted to try a persimmon pudding recipe I found online.[2] Most commercially available persimmons are varieties of the Japanese Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.), but there are also varieties that are native to Europe (Date-plum; Diospyros lotus L.), India (Indian Persimmon; Diospyros peregrina (Gaertn.) Gürke), México (Sapote Prieto; (Diospyros digyna Jacq.), the Philippines (Mabolo; Diospyros blancoi A. DC.), and the United States (American Persimmon; Diospyros virginiana L.) which are fit for human consumption.[3] In fact, the American Persimmon is properly the fruit that should be used for making the pudding. But I had no way of acquiring any.
My verdict: The persimmons were nice and sweet. As for the pudding, I was expecting it to be gooey, like Jell-O. But it was more like a cake. Given the etymology of the word [4], I guess this shouldn't have surprised me. It was okay, but not nearly as good as the fresh persimmons were by themselves. In fact, I couldn't detect the persimmons in the pudding at all; it might as well have just been a spice cake.
Notes:
[1] Had I tried a hachiya persimmon first, I surely would've remembered the encounter. Read my review here.
[2] See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_6_115/ai_n26919247/pg_3/?tag=content;col1. It's from the wife of the infamous zoologist, Alfred C. Kinsey.
[3] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persimmon#Select species.
[4] See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pudding. Indeed, in the UK pudding often refers to dishes that aren't even desserts, e.g. black pudding, steak and kidney pudding, Yorkshire pudding, etc.
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