Helen Leach, an anthropologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has traced unflattering remarks about cilantro flavor and the bug etymology — not endorsed by modern dictionaries — back to English garden books and French farming books from around 1600, when medieval dishes had fallen out of fashion. She suggests that cilantro was disparaged as part of a general effort to define the new European table against the flavors of the old.
But there is a reason why some people say it smells like soap to them.
Soaps are made by fragmenting fat molecules with strongly alkaline lye or its equivalent, and aldehydes are a byproduct of this process, as they are when oxygen in the air attacks the fats and oils in cosmetics. And many bugs make strong-smelling, aldehyde-rich body fluids to attract or repel other creatures.
I like cilantro well enough, but to me stink bugs smell like over-ripe apples. In the early winter when there are fresh-picked apples in the house and stink bugs have infiltrated the walls as well, it can get confusing as to which is which.
Wikipedia explains stink-bug aldehydes.
3 comments:
I've never smelled bedbugs (at least, not that I know of). Stink bugs have a green, rather acrid odor. I don't mind it much unless there's a lot of them.
Cilantro smells exactly like a stale dirty dishrag. While I don't find the odor terribly offensive - it also doesn't strike me as the least bit appetative. I'll eat food with cilantro in it, but I don't enjoy it.
I've never smelled bed bugs (at least, not that I know of), but I think that stink bugs have a green, acrid odor. I don't find it pleasant but it's not terribly offensive either.
Cilantro smells exactly like a stale dirty dishrag. An odor I appreciate somewhat less than stink bug.
Stinkbugs smell like cilantro with a hint of cucumber. I just picked up a glass in my home, and unwittingly squeezed a stinkbug. It took me a few minutes to discern the smell, but its definitely cilantro-like.
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