The ripe fruit is edible and some people like it. Although it is sweet, I find it unsavory. You may wish to taste it yourself as my palate is questionable and major figures have commended it. In Stalking the Wild Asparagus Euell Gibbons provides a May apple marmalade recipe and recommends adding the apple's juice to lemonade. Early explorers recorded how despondent Huron women committed suicide by eating the roots of mandrake or hemlock.
Some people develop a rash from just touching the stem.
Despite these toxic qualities, herbalists continue to use extracts of the tuberous root. The litany of complaints treated includes dropsy, biliousness, dyspepsia, rheumatism and constipation. This same podophyllin and another mandrake-derivative, etoposide, have been found by modern pharmacologists to be useful in the treatment of skin cancers and venereal warts. They inhibit cell growth by blocking both RNA and DNA synthesis. Mandrake colonies are clones rooted from a single plant over several decades.