Mango Coulis

Use this Mango Coulis or Mango Puree recipe for your panna cotta, smoothies, pie fillings or as a topping over your favorite dessert. 

Your mango coulis will add that extra touch to your favorite breakfast or dessert dish.

Apart from adding more flavor, taste, and pleasantness to your favorite desserts, toppings ensure that you enjoy your dessert with creaminess and sweetness. 

There are many types of toppings used for dessert, each with its peculiar properties and characteristics. 

However, this article will focus on one of these types of toppings known as Mango Coulis.

We will touch on Mango Coulis, its mode of preparation, important tips for making the toppings, and the different ways through which you can use the dish apart from its use as toppings for dessert.

BRIEF BACKGROUND

Coulis refers to a puree of fruits and vegetables. However, when you use fruits, you may have to use sugars to sweeten the puree. 

Coulis could also be made from fruit jam and preserved that have been diluted and strained with liquor, water, or syrup. 

You can also use additional ingredients such as spices and seasoning to add more flavor, and acid such as lemon juice. However, these additional ingredients are kept simple and at the barest minimum, to prevent messing the dish up with numerous flavors and ingredients.

Using the definition, Mango Coulis is a puree made from the mango fruit. 

The mango coulis is made using three ingredients including mangoes, sugar, and lemon (which remains optional). 

Due to its sweet and tangy taste and flavor, it makes for an ideal dessert or breakfast topping.

Because mango coulis is a more recent effort to make the best of the mango fruit, there is very little history connected with it. However, there is a rich history regarding the fruit responsible for the mango coulis. 

The mango was domesticated around 400 B.C. in a region that is now recognized as India. At the time of its domestication, the fruit was regarded as a sacred fruit and was believed to have supernatural powers. 

Soon enough, the fruit started making its way to other parts of Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.

Due to the large size of its seed, it is rare to see the mango grow without human effort. As a result, mangoes relied on human effort to propagate and spread to new areas. 

The spread and development of Buddhism across Southeast Asia also helped with the distribution of the mango fruit.

Persians had taken the mango seeds to form western Asia and planted them in eastern Africa in the 10th century. 

The explorers from Portugal were responsible for the introduction of mangoes to Brazil in the 16th century and from Brazil, mangoes found their way to other parts of the Americas.

They were planted in Barbados in the year 1742 while Mexico didn’t have its taste Mangoes until the early parts of the 19th century. 

As for the United States, mangoes didn’t make their way to the country until the 1800s.

Despite the introduction and distribution of the fruit to other parts of the world, the Asian continent is still responsible for the cultivation of about 75% of all the mangoes in the world.

Coulis has not always been used to refer to purees. Instead, the word has evolved to mean different things at different points in time.

The word originated from France, and the French vocabulary was couler, which means “to strain” or “to flow”.

Its adjective form, coleis, means straining, pouring, or flowing. The word also has a similar Latin root to the word “Colander”.

Originally, coulis was used to refer to the juices from cooked meat. Then after some time, it evolved to being used to refer to thick sauce or soup make from pureed fish, meat, or game. 

But with time, these types of soup fell out of fashion, and as a result, the term coulis was then used to refer to shellfish soups that have been pureed.

In the New World, the word was modified to cullis and is used to refer to strained gravy and broth. Of all these meanings and interpretations, only the “thick liquid” meaning has survived till today. 

Today, there are still debates in the culinary world as to the right usage of the term coulis and what it should refer to. 

While coulis could be made from vegetables (cooked) and fruits (uncooked), many people are still of the opinion that fruit coulis are simply fruit puree, and the use of the word “coulis” to describe them is an attempt at being fancy.

Of course, it does add a fancy feel to a menu decoration to see “Mango Coulis” rather than Mango puree or mango sauce. 

Others also argue that a cooked coulis cannot be referred to as a coulis. At the end of the day, what matters most is the taste, intention of the chef, color, and consistency of the coulis.

In the same way that the meaning of coulis has morphed over the years, the usage of the dish has also changed over the years. 

Coulis has been used as plate decoration, and as a form of complementary flavor for both meat and vegetable dishes.

They are also used to garnish a soup, sauce a dish, and also used as a soup base. Coulis made from fruits, especially berries, are ideal for dessert toppings. 

These sauces are usually strained using chinois strainers and as a result, are usually very smooth.

It was the domination of Nouvelle Cuisine in the 1980s that allowed the use of coulis in the culinary world reaches a staggering peak. 

By this time, chefs excessively used the coulis, especially the raspberry coulis, in different designs such as in squiggles, little puddles, and many other designs that were prevalent at the time.

While the use of coulis in different designs is still high today, there is a bit of restraint as opposed to the way it was used before.

WHAT TO DO WITH MANGO COULIS? 

Apart from its use as toppings for desserts and breakfasts, there are other things you can enjoy the Mango Puree with. Some of these suggestions include;

• Cheesecakes
• Sauce or dip for appetizers for coconut shrimps, and many others
• Ice-cream
• Pancakes

STORING AND REHEATING KIWI PUREE

You can store the coulis in an airtight container and refrigerate them. This keeps the coulis stable for about one week. You can also reheat the coulis if needed.

MORE COULIS RECIPES TO TRY

If you loved this Mango puree recipe, we recommend trying one of these coulis next.

Kiwi Coulis

Strawberry Coulis 

Red Pepper Coulis

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