I love coriander. I didn't like it when I first encountered it and if pressed would have probably adopted any negative description of it.
I doubt I would have described it as soap-like[herbalessence] or stink buggy without being "primed" though.
I don't know where you get your stink bugs from, maybe stink bugs vary around the world[daftpunk]?
I'm not disputing the genetic thing here, by the way. It's just interesting in general and in how knowledge of the fact changes how people talk about taste[sense].
When people like the flavour, they can generally just do so. You can say "I like coriander" without justification, but "I hate coriander" is a statement that requires justification (apparently).
Wikipedia's explanation tells me that the flavour of coriander is actually -- chemically -- like soap in some sense, it's just that there's a genetic variation that determines if you like that or not. Citation needed, of course.
Maybe the flavour of coriander is actually like soap. And the people who like coriander are simply the people who like soap? Anyone who denies the similarity between the two is lying because they don't want to be seen as a soap-muncher.
Soap-muncher.
[herbalessence] Which soap anyway? As I'm sure you know, most "soap" today isn't what people called "soap" decades ago. Maybe some people even have coriander scented soap.
[daftpunk] All the stink bugs I know live along the eastern coast of Australia.
[sense] Taste here means both what food tastes like and general having of preferences with or without reasoning.
On the one hand, I think hate vs like does require some sort of justification. You can like something without really caring, but hate means that you REALLY care.
I can barely tolerate cilantro, because I grew up with it in salsas and sauces. At the same time I can and will pick 1mm specks out of a sauce, if there aren't very many. Many people who "like" cilantro, often don't even notice it's presence, while I will immediately notice even tiny amounts. People confuse it for parsley? Bleagh!
I had never heard the stink bug smell correlation, and though I agree it is similar, the strong soapy stevia like taste is just much worse compared to the smell, which I can tolerate.
That's fair enough, I probably should have contrasted 'love' vs. 'hate'. The difference in magnitude wasn't intentional.
I meant to point out that the negative is more often treated as "wrong" or something to fix while the positive is more often simply accepted. I think this is true in general, at least in western/english conversation. But the coriander conversation is notable because apathy or plain dislike for the flavour can be "backed up" with the definitely true genetic explanation. Although in that sense, you actually "can't not like coriander".
I do. It was around 1955 when I was 7 years old. I said a bad word and my mother literally took a bar of soap and shoved it in my mouth. I still vividly recall how horrible it tasted and felt.
It tastes like you didn't rinse all the dish soap out of a glass, surely you've experienced that at some point in your life, probably more often if you've ever hand washed dishes.
> Wikipedia's explanation tells me that the flavour of coriander is actually -- chemically -- like soap in some sense [...]
> Maybe the flavour of coriander is actually like soap [...]
What the Wikipedia article says is that coriander contains some aldehydes, which some people find to taste like soap, based on genetics. I tried to find whether the taste of actual soap is also caused by the same aldehydes. As far as I can tell, there's no chemical link. Soap has different chemical compounds, which most people seem to identify as "taste of soap", regardless of their appreciation for coriander.
Also, based on the reported percentages, it's literally abnormal (i.e. not in the norm) to taste soap in coriander. That easily explains why someone would need to justify their distaste for it. Up until 10 years ago, I had never heard of this coriander/soap relation, so the first person I encountered with this predisposition was met with puzzlement. Then I met another, and now before adding coriander to a dish, I make sure that everyone agrees with it.
For me, it tastes like dish soap specifically, like if you swirled a little dish soap into a glass of water. I always assumed the local Mexican food place just had bad dish rinsing practices until I learned that cilantro was responsible for the flavor.
> I doubt I would have described it as soap-like[herbalessence] or stink buggy without being "primed" though.
I thought this way until a few days ago, when I smelled some new soap in the shower and the thought popped unbidden into my head, "Man, this smells like cilantro!"
Happy to answer, I hope this quick list will be satisfactory despite its messiness:
- numbers make the order (more) significant, making reordering the text more costly
- compared to numbers, words are often easier to spot and jump to
- compared to numbers, the words have some connection to the point (not saying I do this perfectly!) so you don't have to remember which (number) footnote you were looking for
- ADHD
- herbalessence because coriander is a herb, and Maybe some people even have coriander scented soap
- daftpunk because 'Around the World (around the world)'
Thank you! I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on with the bracketed words.
I didn't try very hard, because the post was already heavy down voted and I thought maybe there just wasn't much sense to be made of it, but I'm glad someone explained.
Suffice it to say I would rather deal with numbers out of order than random words.
I'm not disputing the genetic thing here, by the way. It's just interesting in general and in how knowledge of the fact changes how people talk about taste[sense].
When people like the flavour, they can generally just do so. You can say "I like coriander" without justification, but "I hate coriander" is a statement that requires justification (apparently).
Wikipedia's explanation tells me that the flavour of coriander is actually -- chemically -- like soap in some sense, it's just that there's a genetic variation that determines if you like that or not. Citation needed, of course.
Maybe the flavour of coriander is actually like soap. And the people who like coriander are simply the people who like soap? Anyone who denies the similarity between the two is lying because they don't want to be seen as a soap-muncher.
Soap-muncher.
[herbalessence] Which soap anyway? As I'm sure you know, most "soap" today isn't what people called "soap" decades ago. Maybe some people even have coriander scented soap.
[daftpunk] All the stink bugs I know live along the eastern coast of Australia.
[sense] Taste here means both what food tastes like and general having of preferences with or without reasoning.