Fishy Taste/Smell

Factual Questions
1

Why does fish have the specific fishy taste and smell that it does?

2

Since nobody else will take this…

My best answer, which isn’t very good, is

  1. Smell is not a well understood sense. Unlike other senses which can be sorted into a small number of stimuli (like, taste deals with sweet salty sour bitter and umami… or touch deals with hot cold pressure and pain (in a general sense)), smell has not been figured out. So unless somebody wants to go look up what specific olfactants a dead fish gives off (and I’m sure there are hundreds), who knows? I’m tempted to say that the smell is mostly due to putrefaction after the fish’s death. I have this picture in my head of Graham Kerr telling the audience NEVER to buy “whoofy” fish.

  2. Taste. I think that most protein-tastes are “umami”. Umami tastes are triggered by amino acids (in the same way sour tastes are triggered by acids). Proteins are made of amino acids.

Well, it’s a crummy answer, but it’s the best you’ve gotten so far.

3

Nitrogen-containing compounds like amides and amines smell fishy. I think fish contain some amines (it doesn’t take very much to make a strong smell), but I don’t know why they have more than we do.

4

BUMP.

Anyone have a real answer? Why are fish stinkier than other dead animals? (I’m sitting near the test kitchen at our magazine, and they just cooked some fish…overpowering stench…)

5

Like Bob said, this is caused by amines:

http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/amine.html
http://www.chem.uidaho.edu/~honors/amine.html
http://microbiology.jbpub.com/microfocus.cfm?chapter=5&MFNumber=2

6

Maybe the scent comes from amines, but it’s the oil in the fish that spreads the scent. Every cook knows that oil is a great carrier for smells and tastes, that’s why cooks use oil and butter in cooking. Volatile oils carry the essences of the flavor/scent. If you buy fish with less fat, they don’t smell quite so much.

7

Great links. I esp. like this unbelievable info.:

I’m pulling THAT factoid out at the Independence Eve party tonight…

The last link is getting close to the whole answer, but it doesn’t quite close the deal:

This is patently untrue. Fish nearly ALWAYS smells bad, even when it’s fresh. Heck, the whole ocean stinks! I suppose some might say that what we’re eating isn’t REALLY fresh fish–it’s been dead and out of the water too long–but it’s not inedible. The final questions are:

  • Why does fish smell bad even if it’s fresh?

and the important point of comparison:

  • Why don’t other types of meat stink like this? I’d wager that the beef and chicken that you buy in the supermarket have been dead a LOT longer than that fish. Why don’t they smell bad?
8

Better we should ask: Where the heck are you living, that your fish stink even when they’re fresh from the sea? What kind of stinky ocean do you live by? [sub]You don’t swim in it, do you?[/sub]

9

I was a chef in a seafood restaurant for 10 years and can tell you that fresh fish most certainly does not smell “fishy.” Fresh fish has practically no odor and that’s one of the first tests you can try to see if what you’re about to buy is good or not. Fresh fish doesn’t smell, the eyes will be shiny, the gills red. If the fish smells “fishy” or has an ammonia smell to it, the fish isn’t fresh.

10

What about fresh water fish? I have a pond behind my home that I fish in some. When the fresh fish is prepared there isn’t a fishy smell, but they definately taste fishy.