If they made Irish Spring Candy, I would eat it. I think it would be a very unique addition to the candy world …maybe some sour apricot, green apple, peppermint, Eucalyptus, and the Irish Spring Essence.
I think cilantro haters are very much like Retsina haters…to each his own.
I find the PTC explanation unsatisfying because the cilantro in a can in my backyard (winter, been below freezing, not only still not dead, continuing to grow) sometimes tastes like soap and sometimes doesn’t. Also various other plants also contain PTC (e.g. broccoli) but those don’t taste soapy to me.
I’ve had no luck finding any values for the PTC content in cilantro to see if it’s even present at a perceptible level. Or the level vs. other plants with PTC to see if it’s signficantly higher.
It seems a few of you don’t understand. I want to enjoy fresh cilantro. It freakin’ sucks that I cant. And it really is that bad, levdrakon, as I don’t see anyone speaking up about how three or four bee stings in the eye is just as good as a sunny fresh rainbow sort of day.
Have you ever had Retsina? What are your thoughts on sage?
Don’t get me wrong, I entirely understand. My dislikes are sage and vanilla pod, in their pure form. I kinda gag when I see these buttercrisped and fried sage leaf recipes. But I still eat stuffing and enjoy baked goods with vanilla extract.
Well, you don’t really understand, then.
I dislike cherries, but I can and do enjoy cherry-flavored candies.
I dislike cilantro, and I can not and do not enjoy anything that has cilantro in it.
It’s less like a disliked food and more like a piece of pungent turd. And mind, we’re only talking about a leaf or two; the amount you usually find in cilantroed food simply makes it inedible.
(I do deal with a leaf or two in my food. I can tell when I’ve eaten it and it’ll look like I’ve tasted butt for a moment, but that’s fine. When it’s completely dispersed throughout the meal, though, I’m just not willing to taste that much ass.)
I taste PTC fine–it’s bitter. I love cilantro. According to Wikipedia, 70% of the population can taste PTC. Cilantro is very popular and, I’ve heard repeated many times although I don’t know the veracity of it, it’s the most widely used herb in the world. Those two stats don’t really reconcile themselves to me.
There must be more to it than just PTC, unless there’s wide variation in the intensity of the PTC taste among people, and it’s not just a simple you-taste-it-or-you-don’t thing.
Well, to be honest, That’s exactly the way I felt/feel about sage. I eat stuffing but I never really enjoy it. I suppose I don’t have your luxury to be so choosy, sahib.
@Bosstone
I once ordered that new sandwich at Quiznos where they ask, “do you want cilantro?” I said “no cilantro,” but some of them got on anyway. Yep, a ruined sandwich.
So it isn’t soap-flavoring, it is soap concentrate. The moment it makes contact with saliva, ZOWIE, it turns into the taste of ten bars of soap (plus two).
One theory is that kids who swore a lot as children spent a lot of time with bars of soap in their mouths. Their minds adapted to enjoy the taste of soap in order to cope with the confusing and horrifying experience. Since those childhood memories are all repressed, we can only pick these people out by their affinity for cilantro in adulthood.
Cut me some slack, that last paragraph was a joke.
I would say that my two favorite herbs in the world are cilantro and sage! Absolutely adore both.
The herb I can’t stand is terragon. Yech. And who are the freaks who are into fennel? in fact, why does anyone think that anything like licorice is something pleasant to put in one’s mouth? God…
I wonder if more east coasters hate cilantro, and if more west coasters love it.
I can’t imagine how anyone who has had good salsa can deny cilantro, personally. I’ve had salsa from thousands of recipes, and all of the best ones have some cilantro.
I love cilantro, but I want to say that I hate the PTC explanation because it makes things awkward in my head: the first job I ever worked, besides babysitting, was for a group that was known best as PTC. So the idea of being able to taste PTC is creepifying.*
On a more on-topic note but pretty much a WAG, if it IS the PTC, maybe it’s just not noticeable in broccoli because broccoli has stronger flavors over it?
*They used it as a word in Firefly, so it’s a word. That’s more story and I’m sticking to it.
Because salsa that tastes like soap is less enjoyable than salsa that doesn’t taste like soap.
…on the SDMB.
Really. I happen to like the stuff. I seem to remember one or two people I know asking “hold the coriander” when ordering Vietnamese pork rolls, but then I’ve had others ask for no carrot, or no this, that, or the other. I have never heard of this huge anti cilantro/coriander movement anywhere other than on the Dope - and here, it’s all over the boards like a rash. Seems to be a thread a week lately. I don’t get it. Is there a Doper-specific gene or something at play here?
Outside of the Dope, I would have thought of “not liking coriander” as akin to “not liking tomato” or “not liking Coca Cola”. Never heard of this soap business before.
::Claps::
Probably because people don’t make a big deal of it in practice, only when kibitzing online. I sure don’t tell a server “No cilantro, because it tastes horrible and I can’t eat it,” I just say “No cilantro, please.”
I also think that with an active Doper population of how ever many hundred or thousand or whatever, even if the number of cilantro haters is pretty small, they’re going to tend to respond to threads like this, so it may seem cilantro haters are disproportionately high.
Personally, I can’t think of anyone offhand that hates cilantro (when I cook for others, I do ask whether they can’t stand the stuff, since the Dope has alerted me to the possibility that a lot of people simply despise it). My mother used to hate it, but has gotten used to it and now loves the stuff. I was the same way. The first time I had it at a Mexican restaurant, the stuff made the salsa taste weird (being only used to Old El Paso, Pace, and its ilk at the time) and, I guess, soapy would be a good word to describe it. Now, it’s one of my favorite fresh herbs.
I’ve had exactly this experience wiith cilantro over the past 15 years or so. You bring up excellent questions without easily-accessible answers.
Oddly enough, coriander-infused beer was my gateway into better enjoying the taste of cilantro. Before that, I seemed to only perceive fresh cilantro as an overstrong mint/soap flavor.
It’s not just on the Dope though. There’s also the I hate cilantro website. These people are organized. If these people had their way, cilantro would be as regulated as tobacco.
Aw, come on. Nobody is so selfish as to want to regulate something they hate and others enjoy.
