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?
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.