I’ve been wondering for a while now if I might have that gene or whether Cilantro is just a herb i dislike. 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. I’ve never eaten anything where I thought “Mmmh, yes, there’s a subtle hint of cilantro” - it’s always “Oh, there’s the cilantro, and it’s just too strong”.
But whenever I read about this online, people say that it tastes like soap. It’s been a couple of years since I was toddler enough to just put soap in my mouth. 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. I also imagine it having a really unpleasant texture/mouthfeel. I have no urge to try eating soap, just so I can compare it with the taste of a herb. And I assume that most people with the Cilantro-gene also haven’t made an actual taste-comparison. So hence my question: In what way does anything - but cilantro in particular - taste like soap?
The flavor to your immature taste buds wasn’t real?
There is the thing as it exists and then the thing as I perceive it. I’d say I’m tasting the more accurate version of it today but it probably is still debatable.
What something tastes like is part of your perception of it though. It’s an interaction that is based as much on the tongue doing the tasting as the substance being tasted.
I don’t think either way you tasted it was more “real” or “accurate”, but could be closer to what the majority of people experience.