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I live in Oxford, in the United Kingdom, in a part of the city with a vibrant multicultural community. My local corner shop has an excellent selection of spices, pulses, and obscure and vegetables fruit that mostly tends to be from the region of Pakistan and India, and only labelled (illegibly) in a language that I do not speak.

I've just bought a fruit I thought at first inspection was an unripe mango -- previously they have had excellent, cheap, small alphonso mangos for sale that I'm rather partial to. I'm completely wrong, however, for I've bought something about the size of my fist with striking white seeds that taste very peppery, a green coat, and somewhat sour flesh. It floats in water, and the skin exuded a slightly sticky, partially white gummy substance when I removed it from the bag. It's not particularly soft to touch. The seeds look a bit wrinkly, and are not hard at all to touch. The flesh has a consistency of an apple.

Cut in half fruit Seed detail Another picture

I can't for the life of me identify it! I'd love to know any suggestions! Thank you!

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Looks like a papaya that isn't ripe yet. Being said, if you already cut it in half it probably isn't going to ripen any further. A ripe papaya has pink/orange flesh and the seeds turn black.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yep -- with a bit more googling, I think that's exactly right. I had absolutely no idea that unripe papaya had white seeds -- I had assumed that they were black from the beginning. Thank you! $\endgroup$
    – Landak
    Sep 2, 2017 at 19:04

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