Cush Man, the Cushman mango behind the recipe

Cush Man is a familiar name on British vape shelves. It has sat there for years as a shortfill, a nic salt and a whole series of spin-offs, yet few people know where the name comes from. What does it actually refer to, which fruit is the recipe trying to evoke, and why is mango, so easy to eat, so hard to imitate? Retailers’ product pages rarely go further than ripe mango and a hint of mint.

Cush Man, a tribute to the Cushman mango

Cush Man is an e-liquid by Nasty Juice. On its official British website, the maker describes it as a signature creation and a faithful homage to the Cushman mango, which it calls sweet and rich. The recipe’s name is simply the name of a mango variety, split into two words.

The advertised profile is straightforward, a ripe and juicy mango. British retailers add that it is finished with a low mint, a discreet mint that freshens the exhale without taking over.

The recipe has since lent its name to an entire series in several fruit combinations. To understand what it is aiming for, though, you have to start with the tree.

The Cushman, a garden mango born in Miami

The fruit is real, and Florida’s fruit growers have documented its story. The original tree grew from a seed planted in 1936 on the property of one E. L. Cushman in Miami, and it took his name.

Its parentage remained a mystery for decades. A pedigree analysis published in 2005 by the Florida State Horticultural Society suggests it is most likely a cross between two other cultivars, Haden and Amini.

It does not look like the mango most people picture. Round and yellow when ripe, it often resembles a grapefruit, hence its nickname, Big Yellow. The pale yellow flesh is completely free of fibre, prized for its sweet, rich flavour, and edged with an orange halo just under the skin.

Despite those qualities, the Cushman never made it commercially, because its trees bear poorly. It remains a garden and collection mango, kept among others by the United States Department of Agriculture in Miami.

None of this means the recipe was built from that exact cultivar. The maker speaks of a homage, not of a raw material, and no bottle could claim to reproduce a variety that rare.

Why mango is so hard to imitate

Recreating a fruit as a flavour means assembling the molecules that make up its aroma. With mango, the job gets harder for two reasons that agricultural research has described in detail.

An aroma built from four families of molecules

Mango aroma rests mainly on terpenes, furanones, lactones and esters. Each variety combines them in its own way, either with different compounds or with the same ones in different proportions.

So there is no single smell of mango, only as many shades as there are cultivars, and those run into the hundreds. Before writing a recipe, a flavourist has to decide which one to chase.

Two broad aromatic lineages

Work published in 2009 in the journal Food Chemistry separates two lineages. New World cultivars, Florida’s included, are generally dominated by one terpene, delta-3-carene.

Old World cultivars, such as India’s Alphonso, stand out for other terpenes, ocimene and myrcene, and for the presence of lactones and furanones. In the Alphonso, those last two families only form as the fruit ripens.

That is where the difficulty lies. The ripe mango note that so many product pages advertise depends partly on molecules linked to ripeness, which have to be rebuilt without the terpenes drowning everything else. Tying a recipe to a Florida cultivar amounts to claiming one particular mango rather than mango in general.

The Cush Man series, a mango and its companions

Nasty’s global website lists the recipe in four versions within its original series, known as OG. Mango on its own sits alongside mango paired with banana, grape or strawberry.

A fifth variant, Cushman Ice, appears in a separate series called Expansion. Its name suggests a colder take, but the official page does not describe the recipe.

Retailers agree on the role of the grape, described as a dark, slightly tart grape with the same cool finish.

One name, two bottles depending on the market

The same name does not cover the same liquid everywhere. The brand’s UK website lists the shortfill at 70% vegetable glycerine to 30% propylene glycol, meant for sub-ohm kit, in other words coils below one ohm.

In France, several retailers list a 50/50 blend instead, in a 60 ml bottle with room for one nicotine shot. A balanced ratio suits pods and tight-draw tanks better, while a VG-rich blend needs a more open setup.

For UK buyers, the rules add one more layer. A shortfill is always sold without nicotine, and any shot added to it, like any nicotine-containing liquid, is capped at 20 mg/ml in a bottle of 10 ml at most. Check the ratio on the label before buying rather than trusting the name alone.

Cush Man on the flavour compass

On this site’s flavour compass, a ripe mango sits in the west, in the tropical orchards family, alongside passion fruit and lychee. The low mint in Cush Man nudges it slightly north, without taking it as far as the frosted orchards.

The banana and strawberry versions stay in the same sector. To see how those families are laid out, our flavour map for finding your best e-liquid sets out the whole compass.

FAQ

Practical questions that keep coming up about this recipe and its fruit.

Should it be spelt Cush Man or Cushman?

Both are in use. The maker itself writes Cush Man in its description and Cushman in the title of its product page, as with the mango variety. Retailers use either spelling depending on their catalogue.

Can you taste a real Cushman mango?

Not easily. The cultivar has no significant commercial production, since the trees crop so poorly, and it lives mostly in Florida gardens and collections, where it is sometimes shown at local fruit festivals. The Western mango trade is dominated by other varieties, led by Tommy Atkins.

Is Cush Man available as a nic salt?

Yes. The maker presents the versions in its original series in both freebase nicotine and nicotine salt, and in Britain Cush Man Salts is sold in 10 ml bottles, within the 20 mg/ml limit that applies to all nicotine e-liquids.

Is there a Cush Man concentrate for DIY?

Yes, a 30 ml Cushman concentrate is sold by French retailers. Several of them pass on the maker’s recommended rate of 10% in a 50/50 base, and point out that it must never be vaped undiluted.

Where is Cush Man made?

In Malaysia. Nasty Juice presents itself as a Malaysian e-liquid company founded in 2015, and the retailers we checked all list Malaysia as the country of manufacture for this recipe.

Cush Man, what a cult mango has to teach

Behind Cush Man there is a real fruit, a Florida garden mango with a sweet, rich aroma, which the recipe salutes without claiming to copy. There is also the particular difficulty of mango, whose aroma changes from one variety to the next and partly builds up as it ripens.

Choosing a Cush Man means choosing a version of the series and a ratio that suits your kit, then judging the mango for what it is, an interpretation. Tracing a flavour back to its orchard is still the most rewarding way to understand it.

Next stops

Travel notes for adult readers only. Vaping products usually contain nicotine, which is addictive, and nicotine vaping products are not for sale to anyone under 18 in the UK. Nothing here is a buying recommendation.