Crack Seed

crack seed important in Hawaii, is a wider category of confectionery items than the name might suggest. The category also goes by the Chinese name of see mui (pronounced see moy), and it was Chinese immigrants from Canton who brought crack seed to Hawaii in the 19th century. It is, essentially, preserved fruit, often with the stones (‘seed’) left in and frequently cracked (‘crack’) to expose the kernels and enhance flavour.

Rachel Laudan (1996) explains that everyone in Hawaii, not just the Chinese, snacks on crack seed and that what had been in its home country (China) a recognized but minor kind of food has here ‘exploded into a cacophony of variants and a much greater importance’. Describing a crack seed store, she writes:

The jars are full of preserved fruits, red and brown and green and black, some of them gleaming with syrup, some frosted with sugar, and yet others wrinked and dusted with salt, as many as forty or fifty different varieties. Their names are poetry: li hing mui, Maui-style sweet plum, … apricot poo ton lee, … Hilo slice ginger, … guava peel, … licorice peach, … wet lemon peel, … honey mango, … rock salt plum, etc etc.