Hey, while we’re on the subject of fish, saltfish and ackee will stink the house out. When I soak the saltfish in hot water, I have to do it in the garage.
j
I used to make fresh fruit and vegetable juice with one of those juicing machines. One unique recipe involved carrots, parsley, and a clove of raw garlic. One morning, my roommate came into the basement while I was working out. He sniffed the air and asked me if I’d had garlic that morning. The answer was no: it was pungently detectable in my sweat from 36 hours previously.
I occasionally indulge in brick, limburger, and liederkranz cheese, aka ‘cheese that smells like people’s feet’.
My wife somehow missed all her life that limberger was “the stereotypical stinky cheese” and when buying me a selection of cheeses as a gift, bought me some. It smelled pretty bad, and to be honest it took me weeks to get up my courage to try it. A lifetime of messaging will do that to you.
It was good. It tasted a little like Brie, only so much more intense. I liked it, but didn’t want to eat much at one time.
I was encouraged to take my kimchee in the fridge at work home and never bring it back again.
Vanilla paste! Vanilla paste!
I was thinking about the pesto we made the other day (harvested the basil before the first freeze of the winter) and how strong the garlic was.
I peeled and roughly chopped probably a dozen cloves of various sizes, not all of which made it into the pesto. I then ate a large helping of farfalle with pesto.
Later that night, I woke up at some point and noticed that my pillow smelled like garlic, despite me having brushed and flossed my teeth, washed my hands well, and not having got garlic on my face while eating otherwise.
It took until the following afternoon for my fingers to quit smelling like garlic, no matter how often or thoroughly I washed them.
Years ago, my brother and his buddy came to visit me in San Francisco. They went out to a restaurant famous for putting excessive amounts of garlic in everything, called The Stinky Rose. The apartment smelled like old garlic for a week after they left. I love garlic. But I don’t want to smell anything like that ever again.
This is a favorite snack of my wife’s. Dried cuttlefish or squid over the gas burner. Sure, I’ll eat it too, and the smell doesn’t bother me, but it really does permeate the entire house. No amount of Wizard or Glade can cut through it.
Rub your fingere on something stainless steel. Flatware works as well as the expensive specialty bars they sell.
It works with the onion smell and supposedly fish odor too.
I like gyros with extra onion, get one at least once a month. I can smell my own breath for hours later.
Fried dace with salted black beans. It comes in a can. Every Chinese person alive is familiar with this. Typically prepared by simply opening the can and heating it directly over a stove burner, grill, or open fire, then dumping the whole thing over a bowl of rice, noodles, or ramen.
My wife does not let me prepare or eat this in the house, I have to do it all out on the deck. I’m the one who likes it, and I actually agree with her. Attracts feral cats for miles.
And apparently, if you live in a basement apartment and cook Zatarain’s jambalaya with cans of baby clams, it stinks up the upstairs something awful.
Reminds me of a time 25 years ago at my first job. I spent weeks gradually making small talk with a very attractive woman from the other side of the floor. I was just so close to asking her out for the first time when on one Friday:
Me: Can you believe someone brings old fish into the office and heats it up stinking up the whole floor?
Her: Oh sorry, does it smell that bad? Well, it’s not old.
Never got any closer to her, but at least I saved 100 people from that odor again.
Signs prominently displayed in every Metro car in Singapore:
Ditto with truffles. The odour they emit isn’t too strong, except when it’s coming back up your windpipe.
My SiL loves sardines. Once a can is opened, the smell is overpowering. I’ve told her to empty the contents of the can, wash it out thoroughly, dispose of the can, and seal whatever is not eaten immediately in an airtight container. Sheesh! 
As I’ve posted here before, I once brought a durian to a friend’s outdoor barbecue. His parties were noted for the offbeat and unusual, and I thought it would fit right in. Besides, I’;d never tried durian, although I’d heard its reputation. I bought a couple of them down in Chinatown, Boston, and brought it.
After I cut it open, our host asked me to move it well away and downwind from the other food, so I set it up on a small table on its own. People came by to see and smell it, and maybe try a bit. at the end of the day, the host thanked me for bringing it and told me to never do it again. I talked someone else into taking the uncut durian home.
My feeling was that, while it definitely had a smell to it, it was nowhere near as strong or as bad as I had been lead to believe. Nor did it taste anywhere near as good as promised. It looked like alien fruit out of some science fiction movie – the kind that has alien eggs hidden inside, and a few hours after you eat it they hatch out like the thing in the first Alien movie. Or maybe that was just my prejudices.
Some quick research revealed why you were asked not to bring one again. LOL
If you’ve smelled a durian even once, you probably remember it. Even with the husk intact, the notorious Asian fruit has such a potent stench that it’s banned on the Singapore Rapid Mass Transit. Food writer Richard Sterling has written “its odor is best described as… turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.
I really wonder if sensitivity to Durian scent is like sensitivity to Asparagus pee? I have tried to like it, and find it gives me severe indigestion. I also don’t know if it’s mood, or different variants of durian, but at times I can walk right by the freezers at H Mart with whole durian, and no problem. Other times, the smell gets in the back of your throat and triggers the hind brain signal for ‘lots of dead things nearby’. Which is weird, because the smell of actual dead animals don’t trigger that reaction.
Re Truffles, the smell of white truffles is much gnarlier than black ones, IME.
Personally, screwing up sauteeing salmon fillets and letting the rendered fat burn the fish skin, stinks up my house like few other things. Re-heating fish in the work microwave is just nasty.
As I say, I knew of the durian’s reputation (which is why I even brought it up in this thread). But to me it didn’t smell as bad or as strongly as its reputation. Clearly, though, others at the party disagreed.
I’ve seen pictures of signs in buses in Southeast Asia that depict a stylized durian in a red circle with a red diagonal slash through it. The message is clear – “Don’t bring Durians on the Bus”
I’ve heard that the durian we get here in North America is far less pungent than that available closer to the source for two reasons. First is that they’re frozen solid for a long time which mellows the flavor and odor. The other is that they’re probably less ripe that those near the trees.