I sampled one at a "weird fruit fair" we had at a nursery I once worked for. It was quite a few years ago now but as I recall the fruit had an okay taste but a nasty glutinous texture. It is not a vine I'd cultivate just for its fruits :-)

Apparently, the fruit is best if allowed to ripen naturally on the vine until it splits, revealing the fleshy pulp and the interior string of seeds. I also seem to recall something about requiring two unrelated vines for cross pollination for fruit to develop.

In Japan they have selected varieties for fruit; run of the mill Akebia are not really all that good. Even then, I have had a few that were OK, one was a white flowering form. The fruit was light as well.

As GardenGal said, it takes two to tango, so if you want to get your own fruit, find unrelated clones.

Finally opened the fruit and tasted the "jelly", you can see a bit on the spoon. Doesn't taste like much, slightly sweet, consistency more like custard than jelly. The fruits continued to turn purple on the counter, strange but beautiful.

I did collect the seeds from these fruits last fall and stratified them in pots in a mini fridge all winter. Since our move to the new garden is imminent, I finally unplugged and emptied the fridge. Some pots near the top freezer were covered with ice, but the pots in warmer areas have extremely high germination! This in a fridge barely above freezing and total darkness!

I don't have time to baby them with the move so I simply put them outside in the shade. It's a a pretty warm day though, might be too much of a shock. If the seedlings green up I'll add more soil and bring the best to the new garden.

This is why I love gardening. With all the horrible events happening in the USA, there is always something surprising and encouraging happening in the world of gardening!