It’s like a turd covered in burnt hair!
I always thought that durian smelled and tasted like a natural or propane gas leak. That ethyl mercaptan smell.
I wonder who thought, “Hey, these things smell really bad! I think we should eat them!”
Someone very hungry, very brave, and/or very stupid…
I tried one just a few days ago; the person who brought it said is had been frozen, which supposedly makes both the bad and good parts milder.
It definitely smelled like old sweat socks mixed with the stuff in the bottom of the compost bucket you’ve been meaning to clean for a couple weeks. We were outside, and it wasn’t pleasant, but not overwhelming suicide inducingly bad. The texture was not unpleasent but weird to me – kind of custardy but also stringy. And the taste was a little cloying rather than super-yummy. It was a little strange that the smell was so separate from the taste-- I could smell it while I was eating, but the effect was like there was something kind of nasty smelling it the room, but it wasn’t completely connected to what I was eating.
Still, the nasty smell was still there, so I ate a few bites and decided that it wasn’t for me, though I could see, maybe not loving it, but at least eating it without too much complaint, if I’d grown up having it be the only option when I was hungry.
On the other hand, some other people trying it kept eating until it was gone.
Again, maybe a fresh one would be more intense both ways, but nobody thought it lived up to the hype in either disgustingness or deliciousness.
I don’t really like the texture either, but I love the taste in things like ice cream and candy. When I’m in Viet Nam, durian ice cream is one of my favorite ways to beat the heat … well, not beat it, but dull it a bit at least.
In Vietnamese, they are called sầu riêng, which means private sorrow. That’s based on a folk tale of a farmer who found them growing in his fields, and liked the taste so much, he presented them to the king. The king smelled one and decided the farmer was insulting him, so he had the farmer executed. I don’t think they smell that bad though. I probably would have just cut off the farmer’s hands or something.