Love them or loathe them, why do certain foods evoke such a strong response? We asked Professor Barry Smith, co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses at the University of London, and Aidan Kirkwood, PhD Researcher in Flavour Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, why these foods are so divisive. But don't take their word, vote to find out how popular your food opinions are.
Oysters
For some, the ritual of eating oysters – the intense taste of the sea, the unique and thrilling texture, and their excellent pairing with champagne – is one of life's greatest pleasures. For others, erm, they're just a bit like snot.
Smith explains it’s usually this unpleasant texture association rather than one of flavour that makes them divisive. If you don’t like the slipperiness of them, or if you are worried about raw oysters and food poisoning, there are other options. Smith says: “You can change the texture entirely by cooking them. So if you if you fry or cook them, they change and people are happy to eat them.
“For people who want the intense taste, but don't like the texture, there’s a brilliant hack by a Japanese chef, who deep freezes oysters and then grates them onto other foods. You get that burst of the oyster flavour, but you don't get the texture.”
Mushrooms
If mushrooms, wine and camembert are not for you, it’s probably the taste you have an issue with. To be exact, the flavour compound 1-Octen-3-ol is, Kirkwood explains, what gives these foods their “earthiness”.
It may be a texture thing, Smith says, “They do get slimy – even button mushrooms… If you have something like shiitake or oyster mushrooms they can get really quite slimy.”
Cooking mushrooms in a very, very hot pan will also help them to caramelise and crisp, avoiding sweaty, slimy, soggy shrooms. Alternatively, shred and roast them in a hot oven, as in Dr Rupy's vegan black bean chilli with pulled mushrooms. Or, as Smith suggests: “Chopped up and put in a salad raw, it's actually a very different thing. It’s almost crunchy.”
Blue cheese
Partial to a bowl of broccoli and stilton soup? Often order the four-cheese pizza with extra gorgonzola? Or are these literally your worst nightmares?
In terms of the taste and smell, Kirkwood explains how blue cheese is the outlier of the cheese flavour world. “Cheeses, in general, tend to be made up of the same compounds. But, in blue cheese, there’s less of these compounds and instead they’re dominated by classic ketones."
This explains the ‘fruity’ aspects and why you may love every other type of cheese but blue. Specifically, the smell and taste of blue cheese is shaped by butyric acid (buttery/funky), hexanoic acid (goaty), 2-Heptanone (banana/pear) and Methyl thiobutyrate (cabbage/sulphuric).
Each of these compounds has pleasant and unpleasant associations, but maybe it's just the mould that's putting you off?
For Smith, that's part of the joy: “David Chang said this lovely thing about fermentation: ‘It's when rotting goes right.’ That’s a really good definition of fermentation and food. I think some people won't like the look, because they'll think, ‘oh, there's some rot’.”
Marzipan
When people say they don’t like Christmas cake, often they mean they don’t like marzipan. Oddly, the paste elicits strong feelings while its core ingredient, almonds, often don’t.
For some, it tastes too bitter. “Almonds take you to bitterness, they can stop short, but they take you to bitterness. In fact, toasted almond is less bitter than a raw almond”, says Smith.
For some, it's too sweet. “The smell is benzaldehyde," says Kirkwood, describing the classic Bakewell tart] aroma, "which is very sweet. And one of the ingredients in marzipan is sugar, so when you combine the sweet aroma of benzaldehyde and taste of sugar, it’s probably giving a very sweet flavour in general!”
The benzaldehyde in almond flavouring is extracted from the bitter variety of almond tree (or artificially made in a lab). Making your own marzipan from the more widely available sweet almonds, and leaving out the almond extract, will make your Christmas cake topping both less bitter and sweet at the same time. Or skip almonds completely and try Dan Lepard's pecan marzipan.
Gherkins
Pickles have had something of a renaissance recently, with some even advocating the health benefits of ‘pickle juice’. So why is it half of us will lift the offending slices from our burgers in disgust, while the other half will hover nearby hoping to snap them up?
Kirkwood puts it down to the the sour taste and smell of vinegar, while Smith adds: “It could be because there’s dill in there… It might just be the dislike of cucumber. That's one of those dividing foods too.”
Coriander
Whether you’re making carrot soup or garnishing your guacamole, coriander’s a must for many. For others it has one overriding flavour. Soap.
“There's a genetic variation in the population at large and that affects their perception of particular odours,” says Smith. “You either have it [the variant] or lack it and if you have it, coriander tastes soapy and metallic.”
Despite Smith falling into the "soap" category, he has found ways to enjoy the divisive herb. “You can mute the soapy taste with lime,” he says. “A classic combination in Mexican cooking is coriander and lime. And then of course, if you make chimichurri, you've also got oregano in there, you've got chilli, you've got vinegar, and so on," he says. "Now I don't mind it in combination.”
Anchovies
Forget the pineapple on pizza, the real question is, “Shall we get anchovies?” or even, “Am I allowed to get anchovies on my half?”
If you find the flavour overpowering, Smith suggests adding them to dishes to help flavour rather than having them as a topping/on their own. “For those who say ‘I don’t like anchovies’ you can still use them. They contribute fantastically to sauce, and of course, tomato and anchovy, are a great basis for Italian sauces. Maybe just use them like a condiment rather than on their own.”
Liquorice
It’s not just liquorice but the whole aniseed family of fennel, star anise, sambuca, etc. For many, the gateway is childhood liquorice sweets – the kind that turn your tongue black. This exposure may play a part in liking aniseed flavours later in life.
Smith points out that the liquorice sweets we eat are packed with sugar, which is why we like them. “We know this one's cultural. So, the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians, they give their kids liquorice sweets very early.” But the salty-style of liquorice may get them used to the taste in a (slightly) more savoury context later.
Yeast extract
The ultimate love-it-or-hate-it food – the very name of one brand, is now used as a byword for divided opinion. Why is it barely tolerable to some people, but others can slather it onto hot, buttered toast with abandon?
“Chemically, it's very similar to meat and coffee, and it's actually very close to coffee in terms of its aroma. But it lacks a sweetness that coffee has, and in its place, it has a lot of salt. It has a lot of glutamate, and I think, in combination, it’s just incredibly savoury.”
We guess salty, savoury, coffee spread is just too much for some taste buds!
Olives
It's an acquired taste. “Children are innately driven to sweet liking, and they're innately driven to bitterness rejection,” says Smith. This evolutionary preference is a way to protect ourselves, as most toxins are bitter. Olives, freshly harvested from the tree, are inedibly bitter. Only fermentation in salty brine for more than six months softens them into delectable party nibbles. Even so, they still retain some bitterness.
“Bitterness is one of those things you have to overcome. And if you think of things that we didn't like at first and then learn to like, tea, coffee, alcohol, they all taste really bitter.” No dirty martinis for you then, kids.
