351 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
The bread-fruit is never eaten raw, except by pigs ; 
the natives, however, have several methods of dressing 
it. When travelling on a journey, they often roast it 
ill the flame or embers of a wood-fire; and, peeling off 
the rind, eat the pulp of the fruit: this mode of 
dressing is called tunu pa^ crust or shell roasting. 
Sometimes, when thus dressed, it is immersed in a stream 
of water, and, when completely saturated, forms a soft, 
sweet, spongy pulp, or sort of paste; of which the 
natives are exceedingly fond. 
The general and the best way of dressing the 
bread-fruit, is by baking it in an oven of heated 
stones. The rind is scraped off, each fruit is cut in 
three or four pieces, and the core carefully taken out; 
heated stones are then spread over the bottom of the 
cavity forming the Oven, and covered with leaves, upon 
which the pieces of bread-fruit are laid; a layer of green 
leaves is placed over the fruit, and other heated stones 
are laid on the top; the whole is then covered in with 
earth and leaves, several inches in depth. In this 
state, the oven remains half an hour or longer, when 
the earth is cleared away, the leaves are removed, and 
the pieces of bread-fruit taken out; the outsides are 
in general nicely browned, and the inner part pre¬ 
sents a white or yellowish, cellular, pulpy substance, 
in appearance, slightly resembling the crumb of a small 
wheaten loaf. Its colour, size, and structure are, how- 
ever, the only resemblance it has to bread. It has but 
little taste, and that is frequently rather sweet; it is 
somewhat farinaceous, but by no means so much so as 
several other vegetables, and probably less so than 
the English potato, to which in flavour it is also 
inferior. It is slightly astringent, and, as a vegetable. 
