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I've always thought soap was the wrong comparison, but I definitely have the gene that makes it awful.
Cilantro is loaded with acetyl groups, and sensitivity to those is what defines the taste. Soap is also full of acetyls, but different ones I guess? What hits much closer to target is stink bugs. The gunk they secrete to make their distinctive stink has many of the same acetyl groups as cilantro.
With our sense of smell tied so strongly to our sense of taste, you kind of know what something tastes like just from getting a whiff, with a few exceptions (looking at you, vanilla extract... you fucking liar).
Anyway, a more accurate comparison would be that cilantro tastes like stink bugs. Or specifically, cilantro tastes like the smell of sink bugs.
Same. The taste of cilantro ranges from bad to intolerable. If there's just a tiny bit of it in there, it tastes only mildly bad; scale it up and the dish is ruined in a hurry.
Pro tip:
You've probably already noticed that "please no cilantro" will fall on deaf ears when placing an order at most restaurants. "I have an allergy to cilantro - please make sure there's none in my food." will get you MUCH better results.
If faced with skepticism, give them the spiel about acetyl groups and that those are the source of the allergy. Your symptoms are itchy sensation on the tongue, soreness on the roof of your mouth, constriction/wheezing in your throat, and nausea that kicks in later.
You'll be amazed how rarely they 'forget' not to defile your meal with that rancid shit.
Please don’t do this.
It makes servers and cooks feel like customers are lying to them when someone tells them they have an allergy. So when some little kid with a life-threatening nut allergy comes in, they might not get taken seriously.
The other issue is that with an allergy (vs a food preference) many kitchens are required to use completely different pots and pans and utensils, gumming up the line, because even a speck of an allergen can cause serious harm.
I can’t stand cilantro either and I’m agreeing that it sucks when restaurants ignore you and should send the food back each time. Just please don’t make it harder for people with life-threatening allergies.
Reminds me of my own issue with parmesan cheese in things; I taste a vomit smell and just a little will make it bad to intolerable. I followed a recipe that added a sprinkle to a large pot of soup and to be the whole thing just tasted like vomit soup. My wife didn't notice at all. I think I'm sensitive to butyric acid, the shared factor between the two.
I'll use your stink bug example in the future when cilantro comes up, though, especially since so many people I know love cilantro and can't imagine (and to be fair it's very good without said gene, lol)
parmesan tastes like delicious cheesy vomit
You must hate Hershey's chocolate
Whoa! Is that why I hate Hershey's? I don't mind their dark but the milk one is awful lol
They use a lot of similar compounds to those found in vomit
When I was younger and didn’t know what cilantro was, I couldn’t understand why no one in my family agreed with me that stink bugs smelled like, “some kind of herb.”
When I finally figured out what cilantro was and why I didn’t like it, I went digging into stink bug stink and realized precisely why.