Oddly enough, my experience was opposite - when I first became aware that I disliked cilantro (a couple of years after I figured out I didn’t like coriander - I’m slow) I could still eat it in small quantities in foods. Over a period of about a month (and weekly eating of a sandwich which contained it), I went from dislike to picking it off to OH GOD NO.
Now, I can taste even the slightest bit in my food, and it makes me completely unable to eat it. I don’t taste it as soapy so much as… evil. Just, the essence of evil, converted into a flavour. My brother feels the same way, and my dad doesn’t like it much although he can stand it. My mom adores is, but she also likes soap gum (Thrills) so all bets are off on that one.
As previously noted, I fall into the dirty dishwater taste for cilantro.
I don’t know that I am a supertaster, I doubt it. However, I have never been able to get used to the taste of beer or wine. Trust me, growing up in a college town, that is a bad thing. I tend to like most things, even those that other people don’t (brussel sprouts! Okra! Spinach!) but the few things I don’t like are rather uncommon, such as beer, wine, cilantro, velveeta and asparagus. Although my dislike of asparagus is based on its overuse and it just tastes like nothing to me.
Any other beer hating cilantro despisers? Could their be a link?
Well, I also hate beer, because of its bitter taste. Even lightly hopped beers are way too bitter for me. I despise the vile demon bile folks call coffee, too, and look with extreme disfavor on most cooked green vegetables. (I like veggies raw, but cooking turns them bitter and slimy to my palate.) I like sweet wines, though–particularly mead and eiswein.
Cilantro doesn’t really taste bitter to me, like those other things I dislike. It just tastes wrong. On some deep level, it says to me, “This is not food.” Y’know, in the sort of way the smell of, say, cat feces says, “This is not food.”
I don’t know, but as I’ve said earlier in the thread, I don’t especially like the taste of cilantro (burnt rubber to me, but I don’t hate it either), and I also don’t especially like the taste of beer (although I also don’t hate it, and I drink beer occasionnally). So is there a link? I don’t know.
They chop up the eye and if it wasn’t for a different texture you probably wouldn’t notice much difference. When you order your tacos de cabeza instead of specifying a certain type, the filling is usually a mixture of all or several different parts of the head. The tongue is the most popular and they usually run out early. BTW, because of the popularity, Mexico imports large quantities of tongue from the US where it isn’t consumed much I guess.
Hmmm. I hate cilantro, and I also don’t care for beer. I can tolerate a Guinness once in a greate while (like maybe three times a year) but regular beers are anywhere from “meh” to “ick!”
I’m so sorry for all those who can’t tolerate cilantro / coriander. Here in Texas it is an essential ingredient, and it grows very well in my garden. The birds apparently like coriander seeds, as I have several plants growing in various parts of my yard - it grows very quickly, so can look a little unsightly, but makes for a wonderfull aroma while cutting the grass. It is easily the most aromatic of all herbs – I worked in a produce department at one time, and when we put the old cilantro through the grinder, the entire backroom would reek of it in an overwhelming way. I wonder if the soap-taste is tied to a heavy dependence on smell for taste.
Brainiac4 hates cilantro and drinks beer (occationally). I hate beer (well, I hate hops) and don’t care too much one way or another about cilantro (I’d prefer if it wasn’t used, but it doesn’t taste like evil incarnate to me).
Do you like the smell of it? Or have you never really chopped it up in your house because you don’t eat it?
I love the smell of it. When I’m chopping cilantro, my wife just has to come through the front door, and she’s like, “CILANTRO!”. She adores the smell. I think it releases endorphins in her. It is like fresh air, and like sweet, fresh greenery. It’s a wonderful odor.
And, getting it off you hands is nothign compared to onions or garlic, in my experience.
Nope. The dirty sweatsock element seems to predominate in the scent, at least to me. It’s unpleasant at best and revolting at worst, especially when someone is chopping it or boiling it.
Bear in mind that I love the smell and taste of most fresh herbs. I keep a small rosemary bush in my kitchen, and I often keep fresh mint, basil, and sage on hand. I nibble on them straight as well as using them on sandwiches and in cooking. I like the rich, fresh flavors. Cilantro is different. It is the Antiherb, and by the stench of used footwear shall ye know its coming.
See, that’s exactly what I was expecting, but when I had a taco de ojo here on Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, they gave it to me as a whole eyeball, mixed in with a little steamed meat. That gave me momentary pause before I ate it.
My husband doesn’t seem to smell cilantro’s awful taste. As a surprise to me, he planted some in my herb garden last year. I walked up to my garden, and as I got to a few yards from it, I smelled it. Horror. I put on rubber gloves and wrapped it in double plastic bags before throwing it away.
I can’t stand the stuff in any shape or in any dish. Like Balance, I always have fresh herbs on hand, and I love nibbling on a sprig or a leaf, but cilantro is pure stench, unbearable. disgusting. It’s worse than an aversion to a soapy smell, lemon melissa has a soapy smell that doesn’t bother me, but this… unspeakable.
Thank you all for this thread. I always thought I was the only one who hated it.
Do not let the perfume industry know this, or we will soon see “Davidoff Cool Water for women, now with added Cilantro.” Personally I think it’d be an improvement over the orange, lime and grapefruit oils they sell by the gallon nowadays, but de gustibus.
[warning: naive speculations from someone who knows basically jack about population genetics]
Sounds intriguing, and plausible, to me at any rate. If so, could we expect to find the “soap-taste” gene correlated more strongly with membership in ethnic populations that don’t traditionally eat cilantro, the way lactose intolerance is correlated more strongly with membership in ethnic populations that don’t traditionally eat lots of dairy products?
I mean, surely cilantro wouldn’t have become ubiquitous in the cuisine of cultures that had substantial numbers of people who can’t stand the taste of it, right?
Does that jibe with the experience of the cilantro-haters here? How about it, soap-tasters? Do any of you belong to an ethnic group (Indian, Mexican, Chinese maybe?) that traditionally uses lots of cilantro? If so, how did you survive Grandma’s cooking?
