Calamansi
A small sour citrus of the Philippines, squeezed into hot water as an everyday household drink and dried whole or as peel for infusion. It is a hybrid — generally read as a mandarin crossed with a kumquat — which is why it looks like a tiny orange and behaves like a lime.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Citrus × microcarpa
- Family
- Rutaceae
- Part used
- Fruit
- Origin
- Probably the Philippines or southern China; a cultivated hybrid with no clear wild range
- Drunk in
- Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan
Character
Sharply sour with a mandarin sweetness behind it and a distinctly floral peel — less bitter than lime and more aromatic than lemon. Honey is close to standard in the Philippine preparation.
Notes: mandarin, lime, orange blossom, peel oil
History
Its parentage was argued over for a long time and the plant has been moved between genera and nothogenera accordingly, which is why Citrus madurensis and ×Citrofortunella microcarpa both circulate in older horticultural literature. The Philippine crop is grown at scale for juice concentrate as well as for fresh fruit.
How it is drunk
In the Philippines hot calamansi juice with honey is a household drink and a standard order in eateries and canteens, and the halved fruit is the default souring agent at a table. In Malaysia and Indonesia limau kasturi is used the same way. Dried and salted whole fruit is sold in Chinese and South-East Asian markets for infusion.
Production
Fruit is picked anywhere from green to orange and used fresh, or halved and dried, or salted and dried whole, in which form it keeps for years and darkens toward black. The salted preserved fruit is a different ingredient from the fresh one and gives a savoury, briny drink.
Preparation
Infusion · Cold infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
Calamondin in North American horticulture and calamansi in the Philippines are one plant with two naming traditions, and it is grown ornamentally under the first name by people who do not know it is the second. The binomial has moved repeatedly and older labels are not wrong so much as out of date.
Common mistakes
- Confusing the salted dried fruit with the plain dried fruit. One is savoury and one is not.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
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 Calamansi 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.