Cashew

Product Description

The cashew nut is served as a snack or used in recipes, like other nuts, although it is actually aseed. The cashew apple is a fruit, whose pulp can be processed into a sweet, astringent fruit drink or distilled into liqueur. The shell of the cashew nut yields derivatives that can be used in many applications from lubricants to paints
Cashew apple is the fleshy part of the cashew fruit that is attached to the cashew nut. The top end of the cashew apple is attached to the stem that comes off the tree. 
The cashew apple is a soft fruit, rich in nutrients, and contains five times more vitamin C than an orange. It is eaten fresh, cooked in curries, or fermented into vinegar, as well as an alcoholic drink. It is also used to make preserves, chutneys, and jams. 
Cashew nuts are more popular than cashew apples in many parts of the world—regions that do not grow cashews—because the fruit, unlike the nut, is difficult to transport to these places. Unlike cashew nuts, cashew apples are extremely soft and easily bruised in shipment. For this reason, cashew juice and cashew juice concentrate are often shipped to these nonlocal countries instead of the fresh fruit.
Cashew apples have a sweet but astringent taste. This astringency has been traced to the waxy layer on the skin that contains a chemical, urushiol which can cause minor skin irritation to areas that have had contact with it. It is almost identical to the astringency caused by the skin of a mango, which also contains urushiol. The astringency from mango skin can be mildly tasted in the flesh of mango fruit, just as the astringency of cashew apple skin can be mildly tasted in the flesh of cashew apples.