Ask Lemmy

It tastes like drinking water from a glass that has been cleaned with dish soap but not rinsed properly and you can taste the residue and distinct smell/taste of soap. I used to have this response as a child but later as an adult the taste completely changed and now I can taste its real flavour.

It doesn't always taste like soap to me. But when it does, it literally tastes like the lather/residue from unscented bar soap. Like if you wash your hands but don't thoroughly rinse them, then eat finger food. It's a basic (as opposed to acidic) flavor, that really doesn't taste like anything other than soap.

I've always thought soap was the wrong comparison, but I definitely have the gene that makes it awful.

Cilantro is loaded with acetyl groups, and sensitivity to those is what defines the taste. Soap is also full of acetyls, but different ones I guess? What hits much closer to target is stink bugs. The gunk they secrete to make their distinctive stink has many of the same acetyl groups as cilantro.

With our sense of smell tied so strongly to our sense of taste, you kind of know what something tastes like just from getting a whiff, with a few exceptions (looking at you, vanilla extract... you fucking liar).

Anyway, a more accurate comparison would be that cilantro tastes like stink bugs. Or specifically, cilantro tastes like the smell of sink bugs.

I can stomach dishes with cilantro in them, but it just stings through everything. No matter how little was put in, it tastes to me like somebody over-cilantro'd the dish.

Same. The taste of cilantro ranges from bad to intolerable. If there's just a tiny bit of it in there, it tastes only mildly bad; scale it up and the dish is ruined in a hurry.

Pro tip:

You've probably already noticed that "please no cilantro" will fall on deaf ears when placing an order at most restaurants. "I have an allergy to cilantro - please make sure there's none in my food." will get you MUCH better results.

If faced with skepticism, give them the spiel about acetyl groups and that those are the source of the allergy. Your symptoms are itchy sensation on the tongue, soreness on the roof of your mouth, constriction/wheezing in your throat, and nausea that kicks in later.

You'll be amazed how rarely they 'forget' not to defile your meal with that rancid shit.

I can’t answer your question, because it doesn’t taste like soap to me either. Just as you described, it tastes overwhelmingly strong and unpleasant to me, so I assume I have the gene. I do think sometimes it tastes appropriate buried in amongst other flavors though.

This is why I only have cilantro flavoured soap

Only partially related, why does no one talk about what it tastes like when you don't have the gene? Nobody told me it's like spicy mint! I was expecting something mild like basil or something. But no, it's overpowering.

I had the chance to try it for the first time a few months ago when I discovered a local restaurant sells Bahi Mi with cilantro and pickled carrots. Its delicious, but I was not expecting that flavor.

Minute food does a good job explaining it, IMO. https://youtu.be/RZtPynXsFas

To me, it's not exactly soap but it's damn close. Like 90% of soap. Idk what else to tell you, it just does.

It doesn't taste soapy to me, but more like bug spray that I accidentally got in my mouth as a kid. Weirdly chemically

Palmolive. That's what it tasted like to me when I went looking for it.

I once ate a handful of cilantro to see if I could taste it, and I could, a little bit. Then I swore not to do that again because normally, I love cilantro.

Take the smell of dawn dish soap diluted into water. That's what it tastes like.

While we're at it, wtf do ants smell like?

I don't know about the gene, and I do like cilantro. However there are times when I can understand how it tastes soapy to people. It does have a bitterness to it, and combined with its very aromatic nature, it reminds me of soap at times.

As a kid, my mother actually did the completely stupid cliche of "washing your mouth out with soap" when I said a "bad word", so I know exactly what soap tastes like (this being cheap bar soap like Irish Spring, Zest, etc). And cilantro really does taste pretty close to that to me.

It's been a couple of years since I was toddler enough to just put soap in my mouth.

I can't believe how literate OP is for only being 4 years old!

It is a chemical aftertaste. Like a weak soap or maybe even an unscented air freshener. I can eat the food if there isn't much cilantro in it.

Soap tastes like cilantro on account of the simple fact that cilantro existed first. Not the other way around. If you're going to eat soap some people say it tastes like cilantro.

But in my mind, the taste of soap is mostly bitter, with an overwhelming tropical/fruity/citrussy flavor of whatever the producers decided to make the soap smell like.

You've never encountered a bar of unscented soap? The stuff that's made by boiling fat, lye and water? You know, soap?

I’ve never tasted soap, so I don’t know that that’s the taste I get, but it’s nasty and ruins whatever I’m eating. I won’t even walk in a Chipotle. Jerks. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is the stems are the worst part. Something that’s cooked with cilantro or has the occasional leaf is okay, but one bite of a stem and I’m done.

On a related note, I love olive oil but hate olives, because anytime a dish has olives at all, it tastes like there's too many olives. It's like the olive takes away the taste from the other ingredients and replaces everything with olive taste.

Cilantro tastes fine to me though.

I do think there's something strange with how you taste it. My partner and I both love cilantro and will eat it in abundance, no issue.

Fwiw, I have a weird taste sensitivity to all seafood. I can sense the tiniest amount of seafood in a dish because it ruins the whole thing. I've learned that most people don't taste seafood like that, so something like fish oil in kimchi doesn't taste like you licked a room temperature anchovy.

Eating a piece of cilantro while I type this. To me, it starts with a fresh but subtle flavor that then intensifies until it feels like looking directly at a light, then it dies down with the aftertaste of grass clippings

Keep in mind, just because it doesn't taste like soap to you, doesn't mean you should like it. People have their own unique tastes. I, for instance, don't like most fish, and think that describing a thing as what it is - means it's bad - is a weird thing: "this fish is fishy" = gross. "This chicken is chickeny" = delicious.

All that said, you just don't like cilantro, that's fine. My wife doesn't like strawberries. I can't understand it, but I accept it.

Imagine if you will, that prior to cooking someone hand scrubbed all the pots/pans that were going to use. But they didn't rinse them properly so there was still soap residue all over them. And then they cooked with them.

Coffee tastes exactly like hot wet loam to me. I detested the flavor.

I'm a grown ass man, and I fucking hate coffee.

I equate it more to a strong perfume than soap. When I eat cilantro it just fills the back of my nose with that overwhelming floral perfume smell (feel?).

I hate cilantro and other things like horseradish and wasabi but like I love jalepeno and popeye spicy chicken so its not just a heat thing. Anyway for me cilantro tastes like dirt and horseradish/wasabi just has this nasty taste. Funny thing is cilantro has become so popular I have developed a kind of resistance to it. Like I can eat something with cilantro but it will bring it down. I used to take one bite of something with cilantro and had to find something to get the taste out of my mouth. A really funny thing was I sepent a massive amount of time thinking I hated avocado because I only incountered it in guacomole which as far as I can tell always has cilantro. Man when I had just some avocado on something I was like. holy fuckin trump, this is awesome.