I'm afraid I've finally found a fruit I really don't like.  I used to think the reason I had odd memories of pawpaws is because (after our family moved away from the farm), Mom would drive us out in the country to pick the fruits, and I always arrived carsick.  However, I've been watching a pawpaw along our driveway all summer, waiting for it to ripen up, and when the first fruits hit the ground, I took the rest home to taste.  There were no cars involved, so I definitely wasn't nauseous, but the fruits weren't something I'll seek out again.

Internet descriptions of pawpaw flavor range from banana custard to plain banana, mango, papaya, and pineapple.  I'm not sure I know what banana custard tastes like, but I can tell you definitively that pawpaws taste nothing like the other fruits, except maybe having a hint of the unpleasant flavor you get really close to the skin of an unripe mango or papaya.  (I suspect many of the folks describing pawpaws were confusing flavor with texture --- pawpaws do have a texture about halfway between a mango and a banana.)

If I had to describe the flavor of pawpaws, I'd say they're sweet (of course) combined with a slightly bitter taste and an almost over-powering floral odor that sets me off the fruit.  Perhaps if I'd held my nose while eating, I would have liked the taste better?

Granted, there are different varieties of pawpaws, as with other kinds of fruits.  And it's possible some of the cultivated varieties taste better.  But I like my fruits to have at least some tartness to them, and pawpaws fail that test.  That's why my second experiment was to mash the flesh up with some lemon juice and honey, then add it to our raspberries and whipped cream.  I hate to say it, but that was even less tasty than the flesh we ate plain, and I didn't mind when Mark picked the pawpaw off his berries.

I'd be curious to hear from anyone who's grown named varieties of pawpaws.  What varieties are you growing, and what do you think of their flavor?