Bael fruit
A hard-shelled citrus-family fruit from South and Southeast Asia, sliced and dried into pale discs and brewed into a sweet, resinous drink. Matoom is served in Thai restaurants and temples and is one of the most distinctive infusions in the region.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Aegle marmelos
- Family
- Rutaceae
- Part used
- Fruit
- Origin
- The Indian subcontinent and Myanmar; cultivated rather than native in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia
- Drunk in
- Thailand, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka
Character
Sweet and faintly resinous with a caramel depth, quite unlike any other citrus relative. Usually served sweetened further, which it does not really need.
Notes: caramel, resin, dried fruit
History
The tree is sacred in Hinduism and its leaves are offered to Shiva, which is why it is planted at temples across India and Nepal. Its use as a drink is domestic and widespread across the subcontinent and Thailand, and it has never been an export product.
How it is drunk
Matoom is served hot or iced across Thailand, often at temples and in vegetarian restaurants. In India bel sharbat is made from the fresh pulp and is a hot-season street drink.
Production
Ripe fruit is sliced across and sun-dried into hard discs, which keep for a long time. The shell is woody enough that the fruit has to be cracked open, and the pulp is sticky and resinous.
Preparation
Decoction · Infusion
Boiling and decoction
1–3 g/100 ml · 98–100 °C · 10 min
What gets confused
Wood apple is also the common name of Limonia acidissima, a different tree, and the two are confused in English writing constantly.
Common mistakes
- Steeping the dried discs briefly. They are hard and need a proper simmer.
Related botanicals
- Jujube — Sweet, resinous dried fruits from the same latitudes, both simmered rather than steeped.
Comparisons
- Bael fruit vs jujube — Two sweet resinous dried fruits from the same latitudes, both simmered rather than steeped, and both far more familiar in Asia than anywhere else.
- Bael fruit vs tamarind — Two tropical pod and shell fruits used as drinks across South and Southeast Asia, one sweet and resinous and one sharply sour.
Evidence for this page
The botanical name, family and distribution above are checked against an external authority. Aegle marmelos (L.) Corrêa — GRIN-Global Taxonomy record— retrieved and read, not countersigned by a named human. That source covers naming and distribution only. Everything else on this page — history, culture, production, flavour, preparation and buying advice — is TeaHQ’s own synthesis with no external source behind it.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Bael fruit is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.