> In 1544, physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli described the leaves as smelling like bed bugs or stink bugs...
Incredible that neither this, nor the other linked article, even mention the fact that this stink-bug/soap taste is genetically predetermined for some people [1], so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.
Instead, the real story is probably much more interesting, as the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place.
I think you may have falsely pattern matched this particular reference. I love the taste and smell of cilantro and eat it all the time, but the first time I encountered a stink bug I thought "oh, it smells like cilantro".
It doesn't taste like soap to me. I think the stink bug-smell has no relation to the soap-taste, which is indeed caused by that gene. I think stink bugs' scent probably smells similar to cilantro for everyone without that gene.
I know how stink bugs smell and I know how cilantro smells. Never once did I think that they smelled like each other. Could it be a difference in stink bugs? Also, never has it ever tasted like soap to me.
I would tend to agree. Cilantro does not smell like bugs to me. It does however taste like soap. So I always tell restaurants no cilantro and often end up having to pick it out of dishes that I didn't expect to contain it.
Stink bug scent does not smell similar to cilantro to me, and I happen to be a person for which cilantro tastes like a bar of soap. Stink bug smell is typically closer to a pungent marijuana for me, but different enough to tell the difference. Every year, we get quite a few in the house, so I can recognize the smell quickly. However, my wife reports a different category of scent from stink bugs.
I wonder if the genetics responsible for making me taste soapy cilantro are responsible for altering any other scents/tastes.
I am guessing that stink bug can be categorized with bitter almonds, formaldehyde, and ammonia: Scent analogies that are not as universal as their users imagine!
This is very interesting, thanks for pointing it out! I really dislike cilantro, and to me it always tasted strongly like stink-bugs (not that I ever tried eating one...). I never really understood the dish-soap reference though.
So if this is correct, then the whole point of my original post is completely wrong. I'll have to look into this further.
Is the stink bug smell thing a different gene than the taste gene? Cilantro just tastes like another leafy vegetable to me. Sure it's unique but zero negative anything. I had a pile of it yesterday at a Mexican restaurant. I've had cilantro salad at several restaurants in Japan as well.
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.
I keep hearing this, but my personal experience refutes this. I first encountered cilantro at the age of 15 and I immediately thought my soup bowl has unwashed soap in it. I did not eat cilantro-included dishes for years after, but fast forward 2 decades and I love cilantro now. I can't really detect the soapyness that once bothered me so much.
I don't think cilantro preferences are as set in stone as the story alludes.
As supertasters get older, the cells lining your sinus and pharynx senesce which is why you aren't so bothered by cilantro and other related vegetables any more. That's the medical theory and BTW there is some evidence that the cells serve innate immune defenses against viruses.
>I first encountered cilantro at the age of 15 and I immediately thought my soup bowl has unwashed soap in it.
Until I figured out it was cilantro, I always assumed the local Mexican place was bad at rinsing their dishes. I still hate the flavor. No doubt some people with the soap gene can learn to enjoy it though. Anytime I comes up, someone that clearly tastes soap will mention that they like it anyway.
I hope not. I can't stand cilantro. Even a tiny amount renders food completely inedible to me. I wouldn't say it tastes like soap to me (although the first time I heard that, I understood). It tastes more like strongly-flavored dust.
I hate this fact because cilantro has become fashionable and has made eating out into a bit of a gamble. I'd be thrilled if I started liking it, or at least stopped hating it so much.
I vaguely remember reading something similar about stevia.
Anecdotally, I know some people who think it's a tasty sweetener, but for me it just tastes bitter and awful. When I add it to coffee, it ends up tasting like I added a mixture of Splenda and powdered graphite.
Stevia in its pure form is quite bitter and awful. The stevia sweetened products you get are chock full of bitter blockers. Some people still tolerate it better than others.
I'm not sure if there's a genetic link or if it's just what you're used to.
I really tied to adopt stevia into my diet, gave it several months, however the rumbling in my stomach turned me away from it. I also experienced some discomfort in the upper intestinal area. When I looked up stevia before trying it, there were warnings some could experience these symptoms.
Isn't Splenda also a sweetener? Or is Stevia supposedly so much better that you're saying to you it tastes like a worse sweetener plus graphite, or something?
I agree that it's refreshing for an article on cilantro to not be about that. But they make some very misleading implications by completely ignoring it.
It really is one of the most annoying facts posted on the internet. I really should compile a list and make an extension to block comments mentioning them.
I think the "it was native and abundant so nobody used it because it didn't demonstrate wealth" explanation is far more plausible given that the same can be observed with many native plants and spices in other parts of Europe.
TFA mentions that spices were categorized as "sweet or strong" and given that coriander was seen as "strong" it competed with fancier imports. This preference likely "trickled down" making the spice seem less appealing to the masses, especially with increased social mobility in more recent history.
My wife and I stayed in a hotel once which we later discovered was infested with bed bugs. We were thankfully able to prevent spreading them to our home by running everything through a very hot dryer multiple times and thorough inspection of our luggage.
I love cilantro but that room absolutely smelled like it.
It also smelled like my best friend growing up's house, which I commented on when we first entered the room after checking in. I had always assumed the smell was from their foreign cuisine, but I have been curious since this experience if they perhaps had a bedbug problem.
> so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.
It can be if the person who was genetically predetermined to dislike the taste was influential. I agree that this interpretation would require additional evidence to presume, but the above quote certainly does not preclude such a possibility.
Most importantly, much of culture is determined by taste outside of genetic disposition. I don't see much reason to see this scenario as removed from the influence of culture.
This is very interesting! According to the article, the gene makes people either like cilantro or hate it entirely. I used to hate cilantro in my childhood as it smelled exactly like a stink bug to me. But it's the opposite in my adulthood. Cilantro enhances the savory taste, both in its raw and cooked form.
It's not entirely accurate. I used to hate cilantro (tried it first as an adult), as it does smell kind of soapy, but it grew on me. It's part of the taste for something like a thai curry. I recently planted one and thought it smelled great when I was watering it, soapy or not.
Basil can also smell a bit like cat pee, but it's still great on some things.
> the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place
It's not impossible, but without data it's pure conjecture. The first study I found isn't particularly supportive, unless there's been massive immigration from East Asia that I'm not aware of: https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/20...
Well, half of my friends like cilantro, the other half say it tastes like dish soap. I'm in Italy and by the way I'm sowing it today (too late, probably.)
It's an acquired taste plus you have to use it with the right meals. Can't imagine good chunk asian meals without it. Same like disliking onion and garlic.
The issue of if cilantro tastes like soap, weather that be genetic or not, we can't ignore that if cilantro was common at the time, people would have grown up eating it, and would have been used to the taste.
There also was likely less concept of individual preference in the food you ate. The food was made for the family, and you either ate it, or you didn't eat.
Even I had to live through this with boiled brussel sprouts as a kid.
People take genetic determinism way too seriously, and that original "Why Cilantro Tastes Like Soap" NYT article has been aggressively misused to justify a generation of picky eaters. It's tragic how many people miss out on an incredible food because they believe it is their genetic destiny to never like it.
That genetic predisposition only really matters for your first exposures to cilantro. I used to abhor the taste and found if completely vile, but after having more friends from cilantro heavy cultures I kept trying it, and trying it and trying it.
It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes. You don't need "general genetic pool changes" in order for cilantro to become more widely adopted, you just need enough people who like it to encourage those who initially don't to give it a few more tries.
If you're someone who genuinely likes exploring new foods and flavors and have let that silly article convince you that you are doomed to never enjoy cilantro, keep exploring, you'll find reward. If you're a picky-eater, that's fine, just tone down on the genetic determinism.
> It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes.
On the one hand, congratulations, it's good to develop a palate for something even if you're operating on hard mode.
On the other hand, and I can't emphasize this enough, I have always found cilantro delicious, even as a young child. There are tastes I've acquired through diligence, olives for example, but cilantro? Never, I love the stuff.
I'm sure most people's reaction to the discovery that cilantro taste is genetically determined simply think "Oh, so I'm not crazy for disliking it" and they move on in life rather than lean heavy into genetic determinism like you claim.
This kinda seems like you giving yourself too hardy of a pat on the back for grinding cilantro.
True, but fwiw I wouldn't consider potato to be particularly important in German cuisine. Sure you'll see it used quite a bit, but many of the more iconic dishes don't really need them or can be replaced like with bread dumplings for instance.
I tried to find some data, and I have to say I'm surprised how low potato consumption is in Germany[1]: 59 kg per capita per year. Metaphorically unfocusing my eyes while looking at the linked map, that seems like it's about average for Europe.
Another, more recent, statistic[2] bears this out, 54 kg, and also has surprising (to me) details. Of those 54 kg, fully two-thirds -- 38 kg -- are processed potatoes (the article names potato chips/crisps, ready-to-eat potato salad and, of course, fries) and just 16 kg are "real" fresh potatoes.
Finally, things used to be different[3]: in 1950, the per-capita consumption was 186 kg!
Yes, they can be substituted but they're definitely a staple in good German Hausmannskost. Maybe not so much in the South: Swabia subsists almost entirely on Spätzle noodles and Bavarians seem to prefer various kinds of Knödel.
But a good Rhineland Sauerbraten for example would normally be served with potatoes and a good Bauernomelette demands some crispy fried potato slices as well. Semmelknödel (but also often offered alongside potato dumplings) are a more common sight at special occasions or buffets. Many a young family's weekly rotation features spinach, fried eggs and potato mash alongside fish sticks, fried potatos with fried eggs and onions are a popular hearty lunch or late breakfast, and cooked potatos or mash are the default addition to some meat or sausage to the point a common microwave TV dinner still consists of Nuremberg sausages, sauerkraut and mash.
The more east you go from Germany, the more important potatoes are to general population. Especially in the past, but even now they are more popular as side dish compared to ie rice or pasta, maybe due to bigger 'filling the stomach' effect that also lasts longer.
And the list goes on of the food products that only existed in the Americas - chocolate, coffee, hot peppers.
But of course it goes both ways. I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico. But of course the cheese wasn’t part of it until the Spaniards arrived.
Tomatoes took awhile to take hold, with it not really taking off until the 19th century. I've heard it explained as due to a general distrust of 'exotic' foods and vegetables generally at that time and a belief that it was poisonous and would sap your vitality.
Rather than being peculiarly modern, I think probably most cultures have always been much less stable and more changing than we tend to assume, even before modernity.
Using "America" to mean the US annoys me too, but blame the Americans for that one.
There are definitely some unique food cultures within the US (cajun/creole comes immediately to mind, as does Chicago pizza), but are there really American food cultures - flavours or preparations that are eaten both throughout the US and not elsewhere? All of the obvious candidates like hamburgers are popular in many countries and cultures; whenever I've gone to an "American restaurant" (as distinct from a "New York deli" or a "New Orleans grill" or what have you) they've seemed to be serving much the same stuff as a generic restaurant.
I'm somewhat surprised that the article's list of conjectures didn't include one: that Italian Parsley may have just been viewed as superior for all use cases (which IMHO it kinda is, outside of Mexican recipes.)
I feel the opposite: Cilantro is superior in all cases except perhaps Italian food, and even Italian food I am skeptical that Cilantro could be better if not for a bias from tradition.
Parsley tastes so bitter and one-dimensional and you have to remove the leaves from the stem, whereas Cilantro is aromatic, fresh, and you can eat the stems making it trivial to prepare. I even go so far as to substitute cilantro for leafy greens in salad.
That's a pretty bonkers statement. Cilantro is much more used worldwide (by about an order of magnitude). They look very similar, but don't taste anything alike. You might as well say basil is better than oregano. It's just not a very meaningful statement.
In a lot of the world flavor is about stacking complex flavors to get a melange of them. With the establishment of the top end of European cooking as French haute cuisine, there was instead an emphasis on simple, clear flavors. In that style, parsley, as a much more subtle herb, shines.
I didn't say they had the same taste (though they're way closer than basil and oregano.) The question is whether the ancient Cilantro recipes that the article posits became Italian Parsley recipes.
Subtlety gets evened out by different preparation techniques. IMHO, when used raw, finely chopped Italian Parsley is at least as intense as coarsely chopped Cilantro.
The article doesn't really answer the "why" part. Basically, it sounds like there were a lot of small things, mostly changing culinary influences. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why they lost their taste for cilantro but not other herbs. Don't get me wrong, I liked learning the history, but it's a bad headline.
I think it gives the answer but very briefly - "It clashed with expensive foreign spices". Essentially the Italian cuisine that formed wasn't really compatible with coriander.
I like coriander but my general sense is there aren't any Italian dishes I'd want to add it to whereas it's perfect with many Mexican, Indian and Chinese dishes I know of.
Cilantro falling out of favor from Ancient Rome is minor compared to Silphium which was an extremely popular Roman plant that went extinct, and nobody today knows what it was. Also Asafoetida, Liquamen, and Garum. Garum production was a large industry in Ancient Rome. Today, while there are some ostensibly traditional fish sauces made in parts of Italy, nobody knows for certain how Garum was made in Ancient Rome or if extant methods are related.
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Incredible that neither this, nor the other linked article, even mention the fact that this stink-bug/soap taste is genetically predetermined for some people [1], so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.
Instead, the real story is probably much more interesting, as the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR6A2
It doesn't taste like soap to me. I think the stink bug-smell has no relation to the soap-taste, which is indeed caused by that gene. I think stink bugs' scent probably smells similar to cilantro for everyone without that gene.
I wonder if the genetics responsible for making me taste soapy cilantro are responsible for altering any other scents/tastes.
So if this is correct, then the whole point of my original post is completely wrong. I'll have to look into this further.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%83%91%E3%82%AF%E3%83%81%...
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.
Deleted Comment
I don't think cilantro preferences are as set in stone as the story alludes.
Until I figured out it was cilantro, I always assumed the local Mexican place was bad at rinsing their dishes. I still hate the flavor. No doubt some people with the soap gene can learn to enjoy it though. Anytime I comes up, someone that clearly tastes soap will mention that they like it anyway.
I hate this fact because cilantro has become fashionable and has made eating out into a bit of a gamble. I'd be thrilled if I started liking it, or at least stopped hating it so much.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html
Anecdotally, I know some people who think it's a tasty sweetener, but for me it just tastes bitter and awful. When I add it to coffee, it ends up tasting like I added a mixture of Splenda and powdered graphite.
I'm not sure if there's a genetic link or if it's just what you're used to.
TFA mentions that spices were categorized as "sweet or strong" and given that coriander was seen as "strong" it competed with fancier imports. This preference likely "trickled down" making the spice seem less appealing to the masses, especially with increased social mobility in more recent history.
I love cilantro but that room absolutely smelled like it.
It also smelled like my best friend growing up's house, which I commented on when we first entered the room after checking in. I had always assumed the smell was from their foreign cuisine, but I have been curious since this experience if they perhaps had a bedbug problem.
It can be if the person who was genetically predetermined to dislike the taste was influential. I agree that this interpretation would require additional evidence to presume, but the above quote certainly does not preclude such a possibility.
Most importantly, much of culture is determined by taste outside of genetic disposition. I don't see much reason to see this scenario as removed from the influence of culture.
Now I actually crave it a little on specific dishes: enchiladas, burritos, banh mi, and Pad Thai.
But I wouldn't want dish soap in those dishes (I think). And I don't like it on its own.
Basil can also smell a bit like cat pee, but it's still great on some things.
It's not impossible, but without data it's pure conjecture. The first study I found isn't particularly supportive, unless there's been massive immigration from East Asia that I'm not aware of: https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/20...
There also was likely less concept of individual preference in the food you ate. The food was made for the family, and you either ate it, or you didn't eat.
Even I had to live through this with boiled brussel sprouts as a kid.
Deleted Comment
That genetic predisposition only really matters for your first exposures to cilantro. I used to abhor the taste and found if completely vile, but after having more friends from cilantro heavy cultures I kept trying it, and trying it and trying it.
It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes. You don't need "general genetic pool changes" in order for cilantro to become more widely adopted, you just need enough people who like it to encourage those who initially don't to give it a few more tries.
If you're someone who genuinely likes exploring new foods and flavors and have let that silly article convince you that you are doomed to never enjoy cilantro, keep exploring, you'll find reward. If you're a picky-eater, that's fine, just tone down on the genetic determinism.
On the one hand, congratulations, it's good to develop a palate for something even if you're operating on hard mode.
On the other hand, and I can't emphasize this enough, I have always found cilantro delicious, even as a young child. There are tastes I've acquired through diligence, olives for example, but cilantro? Never, I love the stuff.
The genetic propensity here is real.
This kinda seems like you giving yourself too hardy of a pat on the back for grinding cilantro.
Italy didn't have tomatoes or basil. Nor was there corn for polenta. India didn't have chilies. The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.
Before corn, polenta was made with barley: https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/a...
It's just a roughly milled grain, boiled until a certain consistency.
True, but fwiw I wouldn't consider potato to be particularly important in German cuisine. Sure you'll see it used quite a bit, but many of the more iconic dishes don't really need them or can be replaced like with bread dumplings for instance.
Another, more recent, statistic[2] bears this out, 54 kg, and also has surprising (to me) details. Of those 54 kg, fully two-thirds -- 38 kg -- are processed potatoes (the article names potato chips/crisps, ready-to-eat potato salad and, of course, fries) and just 16 kg are "real" fresh potatoes.
Finally, things used to be different[3]: in 1950, the per-capita consumption was 186 kg!
[1] https://landgeist.com/2021/12/21/potato-consumption-in-europ... attributed to FAO
[2] https://www.bmel-statistik.de/ernaehrung/versorgungsbilanzen... German dept. of agriculture
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/539799/per-capita-consum... it doesn't say, but I doubt people were eating a lot of potato chips in 1950 Germany
But a good Rhineland Sauerbraten for example would normally be served with potatoes and a good Bauernomelette demands some crispy fried potato slices as well. Semmelknödel (but also often offered alongside potato dumplings) are a more common sight at special occasions or buffets. Many a young family's weekly rotation features spinach, fried eggs and potato mash alongside fish sticks, fried potatos with fried eggs and onions are a popular hearty lunch or late breakfast, and cooked potatos or mash are the default addition to some meat or sausage to the point a common microwave TV dinner still consists of Nuremberg sausages, sauerkraut and mash.
https://contingentmagazine.org/2020/06/25/curry-before-colum...
But of course it goes both ways. I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico. But of course the cheese wasn’t part of it until the Spaniards arrived.
Basil has been used across Eurasia for far longer. Certainly a lot earlier than 3 centuries ago. For Millenia in the Mediterranean.
Of course the United States does have unique food culture beyond that juxtaposition, but still.
There are definitely some unique food cultures within the US (cajun/creole comes immediately to mind, as does Chicago pizza), but are there really American food cultures - flavours or preparations that are eaten both throughout the US and not elsewhere? All of the obvious candidates like hamburgers are popular in many countries and cultures; whenever I've gone to an "American restaurant" (as distinct from a "New York deli" or a "New Orleans grill" or what have you) they've seemed to be serving much the same stuff as a generic restaurant.
Europe has a refined food history even if certain foods are young. There was some type of pizza before and it evolved in what pizza is today.
Alone the amount of cheese types is huge.
What did the USA invent in comparision? What is specific to USA? Even plenty of typical USA Food was invented in Europe.
I feel the opposite: Cilantro is superior in all cases except perhaps Italian food, and even Italian food I am skeptical that Cilantro could be better if not for a bias from tradition.
Parsley tastes so bitter and one-dimensional and you have to remove the leaves from the stem, whereas Cilantro is aromatic, fresh, and you can eat the stems making it trivial to prepare. I even go so far as to substitute cilantro for leafy greens in salad.
In a lot of the world flavor is about stacking complex flavors to get a melange of them. With the establishment of the top end of European cooking as French haute cuisine, there was instead an emphasis on simple, clear flavors. In that style, parsley, as a much more subtle herb, shines.
Subtlety gets evened out by different preparation techniques. IMHO, when used raw, finely chopped Italian Parsley is at least as intense as coarsely chopped Cilantro.
I like coriander but my general sense is there aren't any Italian dishes I'd want to add it to whereas it's perfect with many Mexican, Indian and Chinese dishes I know of.
it’s funny because german language sometimes has this division as well: süß and pikant ; although pikant in a modern sense means a bit spicy
Is that the birth control one? Surprised they never cultivated it, they had basic agriculture back then.