Melonpan

Typical Japanese melonpan

Homemade melon buns

Melonpan variety containing chocolate chips

Melonpan (メロンパン, meronpan^?), also known as Melon pan, Melon buns or Melon bread, are sweet bakery products from Japan, but also popular in Taiwan and China. They are made from an enriched dough covered in a thin layer of crisp cookie dough. Their appearance resembles a melon, such as a rock melon (cantaloupe). They are not traditionally melon flavored,^[1] but in recent times it has become popular for manufacturers to add melon to melon bread. Variations exist, including some with a few chocolate chips between the cookie layer and the enriched dough layer, and non-melon versions flavored with caramel, maple syrup, chocolate, or other flavors, sometimes with syrup, whipped or flavored cream, or custard as a filling. In the case of such variations, the name may drop the word "melon" ("maple pan") or may keep it despite the lack of melon flavor ("chocolate melon pan").

The name has a bilingual etymology, since melon is a loan word from English, while pan^[2] is from the Portuguese word for bread.

In parts of the Kinki, Chuugoku, and Shikoku regions a variation with a radiating line pattern is called "sunrise", and many residents of these regions call even the cross-hatched melon pan "sunrise".^[3]

Melonpan and pineapple bun from Hong Kong are very similar. By comparison the Japanese style is lighter in weight and taste, slightly dryer and has a firmer outer layer (including top cookie crust) which resists to flaking unlike its Hong Kong counterpart which should be treated with care as the top cookie crust tends to flake easily. The Hong Kong version is also more moist and is generally soft on the outside and inside and has a stronger butter flavour.

In popular culture

• The Japanese game show Hey! Spring of Trivia hands out an award labeled The Golden Brain to the most interesting piece of trivia presented. The award is a small brain figurine on a pedestal; doors on the trophy open out to reveal melon bread that accompanies the prize.
• In Treasure's video game Gunstar Heroes and its sequel, Gunstar Super Heroes, one of the bosses is inexplicably named "Melon Bread" despite appearing as a giant, disembodied face.
• In DearS, Ren, one of the main characters, has an appetite that consists of nothing but melon bread, and many other Dears have a love of melon bread. Miu and Nya are examples, implied by Miu's love of an awful dish made of boiled melon bread, and Nya's inability to remember, much less do, her job after eating melonpan.

See also

• Pineapple bun

References

1. ^ Kazuko, Emi: Japanese Food and Cooking
2. ^ See Infoseek Japanese-English dictionary for pan/パン and Japanese words of Portuguese origin
3. ^ "Melon Pan"/"Sunrise" dialect survey map from Nikkei

External links

• Melon Pan Recipe