Personally I love the smell, but whenever I eat Natto everyone in the house is upset.
Tripe. I can’t stand the smell while menudo is cooking but it’s so damn tasty!
i love andouillette but this is definitely something to cook leewards.
Butterfish It is delicious but smells so bad that nobody in my family wants to cook it at their house so we would go to our grandparents’. The aroma lingers for more than a day if you don’t properly aerate the place. Febreeze, candles and other air fresheners do not work.
Bagoóng It is a Filipino condiment made of shrimp paste. There are other variations but still stinky.
Durian @[email protected] is right about the heavenly durian milkshakes! My siblings and I would eat them outside — we weren’t allowed to bring them inside the house.
There were signs all over my hotel in Thailand prohibiting the consumption of durian on the premises.
Fish Sauce.
Love the flavor that it brings to dishes, even to uncooked sauces, but holy crap the smell.
The first person to think “hmm couple drops of this fish sauce in what I’m cookin might be good” had to be a little crazy. They were 100% right though lol.
Yeah, came here to say this. East Asia has a whole collection of sauces based on fermented fish that taste amazing and have no offensive smell when cooked, but dear God, the smell of the stuff before it’s cooked is horrifying.
EDIT: I guess I should clarify, for anyone who hasn’t had it. It’s not so much that fish sauce itself tastes delicious alone, but it has a ton of umami flavor. Same sort of stuff you get from, say, powdered boletes mushrooms or MSG. It makes savory dishes just taste way better when you add it to them.
I’m guessing oyster sauce is another? I suspect it’s one of those magic ingredients that makes restaurant Pad Thai so good, but I’ve been hesitant to buy a bottle of my own.
Could be, but I haven’t tried that one myself.
We call it feet sauce in my house
Eggs smell so bad cooking but taste so good.
Broccoli too.
Yeah why does eggs cooking smell like wet, microwaved dogs?
wet, microwaved dogs
Honestly, that’s not helping me much as a reference point.
Imagine wet dog smell but warmer
This post brought to you by the acorn squash I just sliced. See also roasted red peppers and cilantro. I don’t have the soap thing, but it do be like a stink bug sometimes.
My wife totally has the soap thing, and I must be a carrier for that gene, because I can see where the soapy flavor is coming from, but it doesn’t bug me.
For the smell/taste thing, I have the opposite. I love the smell of roasting coffee… can’t stand coffee.
Ditto unsmoked tobacco, smells amazing, cannot tolerate smoking.
It’s one of life’s little injustices that coffee never tastes as good as it smells.
unsmoked tobacco, smells amazing
Agree completely on this. Pipe tobacco in particular always smells great (but can’t stand the smell of smoke).
do be like a stink bug sometimes
Seems to be certain times of the year here (US South). Sometimes we go months without a bunch that smells like them, and other times it’s every bunch for a month (and we almost always have a bunch in the fridge).
Vinegar is pretty universally hated a scent. Most foods wouldn’t be the same without it.
Gonna need a source on that universal hate.
I like the smell of most vinegars. Maybe I’m just weird though. Especially the smell of vinegar on fried foods.
Doesn’t bother me either. Just reminds me of food and salad dressing.
All vinegars or just white vinegar?
I use it a decent bit and have rice, cider, malt, coconut, and balsamic and think they all smell pretty good. It may be my brain just associating the smell with the finished product though.
White vinegar I only use for cleaning, so I still think that is nasty smelling.
All vinegar smell seems to be universally hated. It does add the right acidity when needed and you don’t have citrus around though.
I don’t know about universal. My partner hates it but I don’t, and I don’t think anyone in my family does either. It’s a sharp scent for sure, but I adapt to it pretty quickly.
Lentils. May be a combo of being sick/smelling them all the time but I literally have to open all the windows when I boil them
Why does pesto smell like feet yet taste so delicious?
Probably the cheese (depending on the recipe). Parmesan has aroma compounds also found in other less desirable substances.
It smells like feet but tastes terrible
Really don’t care for cabbage. My mom always said it smells like pig slop, not that I’ve ever smelled pig slop. But yeah I never liked it and I think that had something to do with it lol.
Personally I love some cabbage and sausage cooked up in a nice fresh chicken broth. But I definitely can see where the smell would be a turn off for a lot of people 🤣
I came to vote for cooked cabbage. Love it in lots of things, but hate the cabbage stink and that keeps me from making it more often.
Cannot confirm nor deny it smelling like pig slop. 😁
The smell of peanut butter is terrible, but I love eating it.
Any kind of fermented or pickled radish or daikon, smells like a fart, tastes like heaven.
Anything with black salt in it. Eggs don’t bother me, but the extra sulfurous scent in black salt is so off-putting to me. Tasty when used right, tho!
Used to be able to say natto, but it’s so tasty, cheap and nutritious that I’ve overcome my aversion and now it smells good to me.
Honorary mention to Swedish cod roe paste (Kalles). I, personally, didn’t mind the smell, but my roommate would call it “pussy paste”. She was more nose sensitive, it seemed, though, as she was the only roommate who very politely asked me to wait until she’d eaten before I prepared the natto.
Stinky cheeses are all I can think of that fit the bill. Limberger is really good, but smells like dirty feet. Though, it’s nowhere near the pungency cartoons always made it seem like as a kid.
Mostly, tho, smell highly influences the taste. If it smells bad, it usually tastes bad too.
Overly ripe papayas.
Always smell like rot. Taste like magic.
What do regular papayas taste like?
If they’re not as ripe, less magic.
