Lychee

Litchi

What it is

Yang Guifei, consort of a Tang emperor, so loved them that riders were run in relay from Guangdong to the capital to deliver the fruit still fresh — a distance of more than a thousand kilometres, and a byword ever since for imperial excess.

In the kitchen

The shell should be pink and give slightly. Brown and hard means it was picked weeks ago and the perfume is gone.

Goes with

Raspberry Lime Mint Coconut milk Vanilla Ginger Cream Passion fruit

Also used with

Basil seed Jasmine pearl tea Mangosteen Rose geranium Tie Guan Yin oolong Jasmine sambac

In season alongside

Bergeron apricot Acacia honey Apricot Blood orange Blueberry Cantaloupe melon

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