Inspired by this thread, I decided to start a related one of my own. What foods do you not eat because they don’t taste the same to you as it does to the folks who claim to like it?
There are certain foods I can’t enjoy because they don’t taste “right” to me. Raw onions (especially those things called “green onions” – they’re really scallions) have flavor notes that remind me of the time I was siphoning gasoline (Dont. Ask.) and accidentally got some in my mouth (and swallowed perhaps a quarter-teaspoon – enough to give me high-octane burps for hours afterwards). Oddly enough, I can eat and enjoy raw garlic. Cooked onions are quite welcome on my plate, so long as they’re being used to flavor something (anything) else.
Black olives cooked on a pizza I’m ok with but those raw olives they like to cut up and put in salads (Greek, starts with a K) are way to overpowering to me. Even just a few of them can ruin a whole dish of salad for me.
Cashews just never taste quite right or feel quite right to me. I can’t explain it any better than that. I’m always greeted by astounded looks when I tell people I don’t like cashews.
I have a whole range of sweet/sour experiences different from anyone I know. Foods that people describe as “tart” I find to be mouth-puckeringley intolerably sour. On the other end, my line between temptingly and overwhelmingly sweet is extremely narrow.
Between the two, I find cheesecake almost impossible to eat.
Mushrooms. Now, I mostly dislike them because of their sliminess which is omnipresent. But most of them also have an aftertaste vaguely chlorine-y taste. Crisp and chemically and located firmly in the back of my mouth or my nostrils (like much of what we “taste”, but I do not have even the illusion in this instance that the chloriney taste is coming from my mouth.)
I also think that olives always taste far to unnaturally salty to me. Maybe they always do have lots of salt added. Who knows, for by now I’m not trying one to find out different.
Kalamata. And they’re not raw. They’re been fermented and brined, which is why they don’t taste -really- unpleasant. And also why Ludovic finds them too salty.
On the other hand:
Are you talking about canned mushrooms or something? (And yes, the ones you get on pizza frequently are.)
Commercial cake icing gives me not so much an unpleasant taste as an unpleasant sensation on the roof of my mouth. I don’t know how to describe it. Kind of a “skin-crawling” sensation. I’m not a huge cake fan, but sometimes, when cake is served, I think, “Mmmmmm! Cake!” And then I take a bite and get that weird crawly sensation.
I wish I could go back in time and taste Mom’s buttercream icing so I could figure out if the sensation is something that has developed with age or something related to ingredients.
Peanut butter doesn’t taste funny to me, but, for some reason, it makes me feel dirty (in a hygienic sense). The taste stays with me for a long time, even after brushing, and I often feel like I have it on my hands, and can’t get it off.
Although I will sometimes eat it, I find that Velveeta smells like, well, puke.
I also apparently can’t taste caffeine, as everyone tells me it’s bitter. I just hate it because of its effects.
As for anything else, well, I’m the person who tends to like everything. I don’t like celery, but I’m pretty sure it tastes the same to me as it does to everyone else. But I’m not sure how I know that.
In fact, that’s an interesting question: how do you know the difference between food that tastes different to you, and food that you just don’t like?
Agreed. I can feel the shortening coat the roof of my mouth. Other people also seem to love that “whipped” frosting a lot of grocery store cakes seem to have now, and I get the same coated-mouth feeling from those, too. I think they’re the same stuff, just with more air whipped in. Vanilla is always worse than chocolate, IMO. Even canned frosting is far superior to this stuff. The cake always seems to be greasy to me too, even without the frosting. I think they add extra oil/shortening to the batter to keep it from drying out.
Real buttercream, homemade or from a good bakery, is heaven and doesn’t coat your mouth.
My contribution to the thread: raw tomatoes. Other people seem to love good, garden fresh ones. They go on and on about how juicy and sweet and wonderful they are. I, however, find them slimy, not at all sweet, and mealy no matter where they came from.
Cilantro, which tastes like soap to me. That’s genetic, though, apparently – there is a small but not insignificant minority of people who have the same reaction.
And also why Ludovic finds them too salty.