If you love mango, try these 7 tropical fruits next

· FruitLore Editors · 3 min read · updated

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Mango is the fruit that converts people to the tropics. That dense, sweet, faintly piney flesh is a gateway — and once you’re through it, a whole world of related and adjacent flavors opens up. If you find yourself chasing the mango high, here are seven fruits that deliver it from unexpected directions. Some are close cousins; others just share the wavelength.

1. Marula — the mango’s wild African cousin

Marula is literally family: same botanical clan as the mango (the Anacardiaceae), with a small pocket of tart, floral, mango-adjacent pulp around a big stone. Southern Africa gathers it off the ground by the ton every summer, sucks it fresh, ferments it into beer, and — most famously — turns it into a cream liqueur. If you like your mango on the bright, tangy side, marula is the one.

2. Ambarella — mango with a citrus edge

Also a relative, ambarella (June plum) tastes like a mango that spent time with a pineapple: crunchy and sour when green, softening to a sweet-tart, resinous ripeness. Southeast Asia eats it both ways — green with salt and chili, ripe in juices and preserves.

3. Soncoya — the mango-flavored custard apple

Soncoya looks nothing like a mango (it’s a brown, hook-covered sphere from Central America), but cut it open and the fragrant orange pulp tastes distinctly of mango and papaya. It’s a rustic member of the custard-apple family, usually blended into a fragrant refresco.

4. Bacuri — the Amazon’s answer

If you love mango for its intensity, bacuri will floor you. This Amazonian fruit has a perfume so concentrated — floral, sweet-sour, resinous — that a spoonful of pulp flavors a whole tub of ice cream, which is exactly how Brazil uses it. A relative of mangosteen, and a delicacy in Pará.

5. Mangaba — soft, sweet, and tangy

Mangaba from the Brazilian cerrado hits the sweet-tart, aromatic notes mango lovers crave, in a soft, almost custardy package. Northeast Brazil turns it into some of the country’s best ice cream and juice. Just eat it dead-ripe — underripe fruit is milky and bitter.

6. Cherimoya — for the creamy sweetness

If what you love about a perfectly ripe mango is the lush, dessert-like sweetness, meet the cherimoya. Mark Twain called it “deliciousness itself.” It trades mango’s brightness for a cooler, custardy blend of banana, pineapple, and pear — the same indulgent register, a different melody.

7. Mombin and the Spondias clan

Mango’s family includes a whole tribe of small, tangy tropical fruits worth knowing — the Spondias, which includes ambarella above, the Philippines’ sineguelas, and Brazil’s umbu, the “tree that gives drink.” All deliver that green-mango tang in miniature, perfect for salting, juicing, and eating over a sink.

The takeaway

Mango love usually splits into two camps: people chasing the bright, tangy, resinous side (go for marula, ambarella, and the Spondias fruits) and people chasing the lush, sweet, dessert side (go for cherimoya, bacuri, and mangaba). Figure out which mango person you are, and the next fruit picks itself. Every one of these is worth a detour — and most of them will never see the inside of your local supermarket, which is exactly the point.

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A whole ripe mango beside a halved one showing deep-orange flesh
Photo: Ivar Leidus · CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Mango

The world's most beloved tropical stone fruit — honey-sweet golden flesh with floral, resinous notes. The Philippine Carabao variety is prized as one of the sweetest on earth.

Stone fruit Spring Summer
Ripe butter-yellow marula fruits (Sclerocarya birrea) fallen on red sand, the way they are gathered
Photo: SAplants · CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Marula

Southern Africa's golden windfall fruit — a plum-sized cousin of the mango whose tart, floral flesh feeds villages, breweries, and the famous cream liqueur. Whole ecosystems and economies pick it up off the ground every February.

Tropical & subtropical Summer
A whole yellow bacuri beside a halved one showing white pulp and two large seeds, with bacuri seed butter alongside
Photo: P. S. Sena · CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Bacuri

One of the Amazon's most prized flavors — a thick-skinned fruit whose fragrant, sweet-tart white pulp becomes some of Brazil's greatest ice cream and mousse. A relative of mangosteen, so loved in Pará that the pulp is priced like a delicacy.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn
Soncoya illustration

Soncoya

The rugged giant of the custard-apple family — a brown, hook-covered fruit the size of a grapefruit hiding fragrant orange pulp that tastes of mango and papaya. A rustic Central American cousin of soursop and cherimoya, usually drunk rather than spooned.

Tropical & subtropical Summer Autumn
Mangaba illustration

Mangaba

The soft, fragrant fruit of a rubber-producing cerrado tree — sweet-tart and creamy when dead-ripe, milky and mouth-gripping if picked too soon. Northeast Brazil turns it into ice cream and juice, and the name itself means "good thing to eat."

Tropical & subtropical Spring Summer

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