A lot of things smell bad because we associate them with bad things, sometimes even bad tastes. If a bad smell has a different taste that you expect, it can be good.
I more often find the opposite: that something smells yummy but tastes awful.
I will admit that Kim Chi smells terrible, and many people hate the taste. I have trouble with the smell but like the taste. Poi can have a questionable smell and some don’t like it, but once again, I find it quite enjoyable.
Parmesan cheese often smells bad. Some people liken it to vomit or stinky feet. I can smell that when I sniff the cheese but it tastes wonderful to me anyway.
Several years ago I discovered Limburger cheese in a local supermarket. “How bad can it be,” I thought, “People buy it and eat it, and apparently like it.” So I bought some. When I opened up the package at home, the first description that came to me was “concentrated cat urine.” “But,” I thought, “it’s gotta taste better than it smells.” Sadly, it tasted exactly like it smelled. Now, whenever my cats’ litter doesn’t entirely succeed at covering the odor, I think “Mmmmm, Limburger cheese!”
And on a visit to the UK, I had the same experience with haggis; it truly tasted as bad as it smelled. I did force myself to swallow one bite, though, before tossing the rest. And “vegetarian haggis” (made from oatmeal) was just as bad.
French unpasturized cheese served in little restaurants in France. stuff looks and smells revolting but is tasty.
Stinky tofu and stinky winter melon in chinese cuisine is delightful. Drunken crab or shrimp may smell that way to some but is good.
fermented shrimp paste is nasty smelling and tasting…but beloved by the sothern chinese and much of SE Asians.
Yak butter tea is another one. Man, I just love the stuff but the smell puts most people off even trying it.
It has the great taste of shit, without the annoying occasional corn kernel to interrupt the texture! New from General Foods, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Pure Shit!”
I read somewhere it’s actually the same chemical in the cheese as in the vomit that makes that smell.
Yup.
Revtim is right - butyric acid is the common culprit.
I just finished off a little package of limburger cheese. It wasn’t THAT bad, but my nose is probably not as keen as in younger days. I have fond memories of crackers and limburger at grandma’s…Now, take hash, a can of hash, heating in a pan. I hate the smell, but I hate the greasy salty gloppy hash itself even more. If I’m going to smell up the house, I’d rather the food turned out better.
Yup.
What I heard is that it’s the same bacteria that makes socks and cheese smell.
Personally, I don’t think durian tastes the way it smells: it has a very strong smell, but a fairly mild taste.
Now stinky tofu on the other hand, smells terrible and has a fairly strong taste and yet I like eating it once in a while.
I wonder if the way zombies smell resembles the way they taste on any level.
Woowoowoowoowoowooo! Moe, Larry, the cheese! Moe, Larry, the cheese! No, not Limburger! Roquefort!
Chiming in – with a little trepidation – in this zombie thread: I’ve read a lot on the Net in the past few years, about the feared lutefisk. Never tried it myself, nor feel particularly keen to.
However – an interesting different-from-usual angle on the stuff, comes from the British food writer and broadcaster Sophie Grigson. She sampled it in the Lofoten Islands in Norway. Her “take” : she recounts the process of lengthy soaking of “Stockfish [dried cod], as hard as a bone”, in frequent changes of water; then its spell in a lye solution – then the thorough and again lengthy, washing-out of the lye – “not a substance our bodies take to happily” – after which “then, and only then, is it ready to cook”.
Her verdict on the at-last-cooked lutefisk: “sorry, not my cup of tea. The bizarre jellyish consistency and terminal blandness seems a cruel destiny for what was once good fresh Lofoten cod.” So – one sampler of lutefisk who considered it more boring, than nasty !
REAL Parm and Romano cheese both properly smell like an unwashed sock, or maybe crotch. And they’re both delicious.
Why? Because human beings are freakin’ weird.
Sorry, I have a nit to pick: Lutefisk is not brined or fermented. It is dried cod, reconstituted with lye, then rinsed and steamed. The legend goes that some unfortunate fisher in Lofoten had a drying rack get lit on fire by a lightning storm. When the fire died down, he found several fish still to be intact, although the taste and consistency had been considerably altered by the mixture of water and ash from the rack. He ate it anyway, being short on food, and now it’s a christmas staple in Norway, for some incomprehensible reason.
If you’re interested in fermented fish, we have a few ways of preparing freshwater fish via fermentation. “Grav-” and “Rak-” fish comes to mind. These processes are completely different from how you prepare surstrømming and hakarl. The smell is mildly sweet/sour and the taste is mild.
I knew Durian would come up, but unless you have eaten it fresh in the tropics in a place like Malaysia or Hawaii, you haven’t really given it a chance.
Durian that is available in the US and Europe has been frozen and is days old.
I’m not saying that everyone would like it. There are many people that dislike peaches or raspberries. I’m just hoping that if one is ever given a chance to try it fresh, they do so and are not blinded by what everyone says about it.