the cilantro wars

[calimac]

So far, my previous post about cultural customs that have changed for the better hasn't produced any rants in defense of tobacco, though there are smokers out there who believe that non-smoking rules are only promulgated by puritans who wish to deny themselves, and everyone else, a pleasure. It's one of those examples of, "Everyone is really like me" thinking.

A little more of it may be found in Scalzi's post announcing a survey on cilantro. Scalzi likes cilantro, and suggests that people who dislike it might be converted if they tried his wife's salsa. I trust he's saying that just as a humorous compliment to her. But others seem really to believe that. The NY Times article Scalzi links to quotes someone who says that dislike is a result of associations and you can train yourself out of it. Also see comment #117, "I think the real problem is not that people don’t like it, but that they are not willing to push themselves out of their comfort zones. If they try it a couple times they’ll learn to like it, but they won’t."

Now that is true for some people, as we'll see. But if #117 would just read #107 above, it'd be clear that it's not for everybody: "Cilantro has an almost unutterably loathsome taste. Picking it out of the food doesn’t begin to address the situation." And #107 isn't even speaking of himself; he's indifferent to cilantro and the reaction he's describing is his wife's. #107 has empathy; he knows that not everyone is like him.

#121 doesn't see what the problem is. "No one is forcing you to eat the stuff." Unfortunately, that's not true. Cilantro used to be little heard of, at least around here, but this is another cultural change: it's suddenly in all sorts of cuisines now, and sometimes not just sprinkled on top but unremovably embedded: mixed in the pre-made ingredients, and in places where the server doesn't even know it's there if you ask. (And if you say, "just pick it out, then," re-read #107.)

Scalzi hasn't toted up the answers yet, but I've gone through the first 300 comments and come up with this from those who offer testimony, assuming they don't repeat themselves:

1. 110 unreservedly like cilantro. Many, even most, of these, actually rave about how wonderful it tastes.
2. 60 unreservedly hate it. Opinions of the taste vary: soap, bug spray, old socks, metallic, or something so dank and loathsome they can't describe it. A couple say they're allergic: it causes internal distress.
3. 45 are mixed. Most of these like it in small quantities, but say that too much can quickly overpower a dish, or that it's OK as an ingredient in salsa but not by itself. A few, especially near the top of the thread, say they dislike the taste but they like to eat it anyway. (I don't quite follow that part.)
4. 11 say they used to dislike it, but have learned or are learning to like it. That's 11, compared to 60.
5. 2 say they've gone the other way: they used to like it, but now they don't.
6. 10 are indifferent to the taste. It doesn't do anything for them one way or the other.
7. 9 don't know what it tastes like. They've either never had it or are unaware of it.

So of the respondents, a full 24% absolutely despise the stuff. Now, not every restaurant can accommodate every taste: there's probably not a food in the world that somebody doesn't hate. But it seems to me that such a strong reaction from that many people means that the stuff ought not to be ubiquitous or unremovable from most dishes before cooking. People with things like celiac disease or peanut allergy are accommodated in this way; so should the cilantrless.

I'm not speaking for myself. I'd add myself to the 10 indifferent. If I try a sprig of cilantro by itself, I can detect how it would taste soapy to other people, but as an ingredient I can hardly tell that it's there. It's almost like parsley. For me, parsley is a decorative garnish added for appearances only: it never struck me that it's supposed to have a taste. I'm far less mystified by cilantro-hating than I am by cilantro-loving. I like herbs, and use herb mixtures a lot in cooking, but actually raving over the taste of a particular herb is something beyond my powers of imagination.

But I am certainly sympathetic. I know people who despise cilantro, and I believe them. People react differently to medications, why not to foods? To argue over this is like arguing over other individual differences. "I'm 5-foot-4." "Well, I'm 5-foot-9! You must have mis-measured yourself!" (Worse still: "You could grow if you really wanted to!") The ubiquitous food I really dislike is potato. The mealy texture, and also the taste. (Some tell me the potato, like the parsley, is tasteless. But if so, why do some people love it so much?) I'll only eat it if it's burned to a crisp, so I do eat potato chips (or as they're more accurately called in Britain, crisps). This is why I've never visited Ireland, where, by the accounts of friends who've been there of the food served, I'd probably starve before I could get out of there.

Comments

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Certainly people's taste buds and likes/dislikes differ. Probably any food you could name, you could find someone who disliked it. But the interesting question here is whether dislikes are immutable. I'm willing to believe that some are as unchangeable as height, but I suspect that many, even most, are shiftable.

I used to loathe cilantro but have been coming around to it (especially in salsa, curiously, where I now actively appreciate it), so the explanation about re-mapping associations rang true for me when I read the original article (I assume we're referring to the column just written by Harold McGee).

I do believe that most people would be able to retrain their taste buds to accept, possibly even enjoy, cilantro or other food dislikes, if they wanted to or absolutely had to. (Not food allergies, obviously.) But why should they? I intensely dislike beer. I suspect I could learn to drink it if I really wanted to expend the effort. But why bother? There are so many other foods available that I liked immediately, no additional effort required.

I did consciously train myself to appreciate bitter flavors (chicory, Campari, etc.). I decided that there was a whole spectrum of flavors that Europeans enjoyed that my bland, sweet-centric American upbringing was holding me back from. But I have no intention of tackling andouille (French style, not New Orleans).

On the immutable side, I have a friend who smell/taste senses were damaged in childhood. The first time she bit into an apple afterwards, it tasted horrible to her ("Who gave me this poisoned apple," she thought to herself). So I certainly accept that there can be physiological differences. But I'm not convinced that's true for the majority of people.

I'm sure there's something interesting in all this regarding developmental psychology, deep-rooted reactions, and sense of self.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I've heard it claimed that those who find the taste of cilantro 'soapy' strongly correlate with those who it. In my case, I started out finding it soapy-tasting when I first tried cilantro, and did not care for it. I have no idea when that initial reaction changed, but some time after my first introduction to it, I stopped finding the taste soapy, and also came to actively love the taste, particularly in combinations that include garlic, lime, and hot peppers. If there's an herb I associate with the umami taste, it's cilantro.

As for evolving tastes, it's certainly been my experience. I started out as an extremely fussy eater as a child and have learned to tolerate, like, and love a great variety of foods that I used not to care for. But like tetrachromats and supertasters, I would say people for whom tastes are physiologically, immutably different from mine are at least theoretically possible.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My experience is that the flavors that made me gag unutterably as a child diminished to a tolerable dislike by my thirties. This wasn't the result of continued exposure: I'd avoided them like the plague until some circumstance when politeness expected me to eat a few bites. I think it's merely a case of the sense of taste diminishing with age, just like all the other senses do. Certainly I became more craving of strong spices at about the same time.

The discovery that I could now tolerate - though I still dislike - beets, cooked carrots, etc., was deeply ironic. Man, could I have used that tolerance in childhood! Nobody's making me eat them now, but then I was under orders to gag them down. My father always believed the revulsion was some exaggerated put-on, but oh, no, it was nothing of the kind.

The foods I strongly disliked in childhood, but didn't make me gag - potato, mushrooms - my feelings about haven't changed at all.

One food I disliked as a child that I came to like later is pizza. I like both cheese and bread, but the combination made me squick. But I didn't train myself to like it: one day (I was still in adolescence) I just did. Something similar happened with scallops. I cannot offhand think of any foods that I disliked and then came to like through repeated exposure, but it happens all the time with music.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

A short rant in defense of tobacco: it is highly probable that the Enlightenment, in part, was brought to you by tobacco. Being largely in favor of the Enlightenment, I would certainly suggest that, not unlike many other drugs, tobacco used in moderation has its uses.

As for cilantro, I don't find it especially ubiquitous or even common. People who hate it should probably just avoid cuisines that lean heavily on its use, or Stay Out of California.

As for cilantro having been little heard of, that's a nomenclature issue not a culinary one. Cilantro is just coriander by another name, after all. Has been used in all sorts of European cooking for literally hundreds of years. It's a bit like claiming that no one ever cooks with courgettes in the Americas.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Has been used in all sorts of European cooking for literally hundreds of years

The seeds, certainly. But the fresh greens as well? Everything I've ever read says that the greens were rarely used in European cooking.

For more discussion, check out the ever charming Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, use of coriander leaves in European cooking dates back to the Romans, at least, and has continued in Mediterranean and Portugese traditions. I'm pretty sure the Elizabethan recipe for chicken fricassee I have somewhere includes coriander also.

But for Roman usage:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/233472.html

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In the context I used the phrase, cilantro being little heard of is a culinary issue, not a nomenclature one. Whatever people may have been doing somewhere for thousands of years, I have the direct testimony of cilantro-haters that they never encountered it in their food until recent decades, and now it's everywhere. (And not just in California: one Californian had an early, horrible encounter with it in Tennessee.)

This partly correlates with expanding cuisine availability. I hardly ever saw a Thai restaurant until about 20 or 25 years ago; now they're as ubiquitous as Chinese. But not entirely: cilantro is showing up in cuisines that never had it - at least in restaurants around here - until recently.

As for the nomenclature, I've found absolute consistency in restaurants, groceries, and the recipes I read: coriander is the seed, cilantro is the leaves.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I have the direct testimony of cilantro-haters that they never encountered it in their food until recent decades, and now it's everywhere.

Ah. Well. Anecdotal evidence. Yes, that trumps my anecdotal evidence, certainly. Or, you know, not.

I've found absolute consistency in restaurants, groceries, and the recipes I read: coriander is the seed, cilantro is the leaves.

Right over the plate and you just plain missed it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

My original statement about the ubiquity of cilantro was qualified by "at least around here." Certainly many ingredients have been used by many people at many times, but I'm speaking to modern American restaurant cuisine.

If by "my anecdotal evidence" you mean your statement that "I don't find it especially ubiquitous or even common," that may be true in your particular place and choice of cuisines, but the growing ubiquity of cilantro is testified to not only by my own observations, and those of quite a few people I know, but a large number of Scalzi's commenters, both pro- and anti-cilantro. I think that's enough to establish that even if the trend is not universal (and even I don't find it in every cuisine), the trend is real.

Dunno what you mean by your baseball metaphor. I'm the one who brought this up, and when I said that cilantro had been little heard of in the context I spoke of, I meant the physical leaves and not just the plant's name. You wrote as if you were correcting me, but actually you were changing the subject to nomenclature. So I responded to the issue of nomenclature.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Add me to those who loathe cilantro - though, oddly, I don't mind moderate quantities in salsa. I find it particularly annoying that it has become so ubiquitous in Chinese food.

[margdean56.livejournal.com]

As someone who has disliked the taste of all cheese since early childhood, I am intensely sympathetic to other people's food aversions. I don't think any food ingredient should be so ubiquitous that you can't avoid it.

[mithriltabby]

As the science of molecular gastronomy spreads and people start paying attention to individual variation in taste bud density and smell receptors, I think we’re going to see a broadening understanding that different people can smell and taste the world in completely different ways. Most people have heard of colorblindness; give it a while longer and they’ll have terms for the people who are sensitized to particular components of food and recipe books for compensating for that. Eventually, I could see restaurants with smart menus that talk to your cellphone, find out your smell/taste profile, and then recommend or disrecommend dishes based on known ingredients.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Data point: I'm allergic to both cilantro and parsley, as well as many of the other umbelliferous herbs and vegetables (celery, for example).

Not Happy about cilantro in everything.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Allergy, as distinguished from revulsion, appears to be rare with cilantro, but a couple of Scalzi's respondents also testify to it. For them, it appears to be digestive upset. Without getting into TMI, is that what it is for you?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

For me, it's coffee.

Several years ago, I was with a party going home after seeing Hidalgo. The other four ordered a serving of tiramisu to share, and chorale offered me a bite of hers. I took it, and after a moment I realized that my mouth had been filled with an unendurably ghastly taste, and reached in haste for my napkin. Then they remembered that coffee (in fact, espresso, according to Wikipedia) is one of the ingredients.

Since I was completely unaware of that, and still reacted as I did, I have concluded that I don't merely find the smell of coffee repulsive; I detest the taste as well. This is one of the flavors that seems to provoke the "you could learn to appreciate it" and "you haven't had good (food substance)" reactions to people who dislike it. . . .

So I am quite prepared to be sympathetic to chorale's feeling that cilantro tastes like soap.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting testimony. I like the smell of coffee, but not the taste. (At least when I last tried it, 30 years ago.)

Also, caffeine appears to do nothing for or to me.

[ellen-denham.livejournal.com]

I've heard similar things about mushrooms--most people either seem to love them or can't stand them. I'm definitely in the hobbit camp and used to ask for mushrooms for Christmas as a relatively young child.

Cilantro is not something I grew up with and probably had it for the first time in Mexican salsa. For me it was an acquired taste. I didn't hate it totally, but it tasted odd. Now, I love it, but only in things I feel it goes with, like sopa di lima (a Mexican soup featuring lime juice) or salsa, or pad Thai. It's an herb I think is so much better fresh than dried that I'd like to grow some this year, along with basil and parsley, other herbs I've grown in the past.

When I first tried Thai food, I did not like lemongrass. Once I knew what it looked like, I learned to pick around it. But now I enjoy it, though I don't know that I'd buy it to use as an ingredient. I'd probably use cilantro instead for a similar flavor.

Surely there are people who probably love cilantro the first time they try it. I wonder how much depends on flavors you're exposed to as a child, and how much might be genetic, and how much might be just training your taste buds to appreciate something.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've occasionally been read as an unmutual in hobbitic circles because I don't care for mushrooms. (I don't loathe them, I just dislike them.) My usual response is to say, "How many of you smoke?"