Can you eat Mandrake?
Furthermore, is the Mandrake poisonous?
Legend aside, the mandrake plant, Mandragora officinarum, a member of the Solanaceae family, is indeed poisonous. The roots and berries contain anticholinergic alkaloids such as hyoscyamine and scopolamine.
In this way, what does Mandrake taste like?
The ripe fruit is edible and some people like it. Although it is sweet, I find it unsavory. Captain John Smith of the Virginia Colony wrote of it as a "pleasant wholesome fruit much like a lemond" (sic) in 1612 and seven years later Samuel Champlain, introduced to mandrake by the Hurons, said it tasted like a fig.
But its powers are not only mythical: a member of the nightshade plant family, mandrake contains hallucinogenic and narcotic alkaloids. Dioscurides, a first-century Greek physician, tells us that a “winecupful” of mandrake root (that is, mandrake root boiled in wine) was used as an anesthetic in ancient Rome.