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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder how disgusting foods like this come in to being. I have to believe it's primarily kids daring each other. My other favorite example is Korean Hongeo-hoe, fermented skate, which has been described as "like licking a urinal." My, sounds delish!!

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> I always wonder how disgusting foods like this come in to being.

The answers tends to be either finding a way to eat the inedible (because there are times where calories > no calories regardless of the source of calories), or finding a way to conserve it somewhat / somehow. Even ignoring its use in creating alcohol from sugars, fermentation can do both (separately or at the same time) and more.

Often these become typical delicacies (the flavors can be intriguing or interesting, or "interesting" in the case of some like Hákarl and possibly the Hongeo-hoe you're talking about).

For Casu marzu, it's probably either finding a way to control spoliation such that the result is still edible, though it's also possible that uncontrolled spoliation simply resulted in something those adventurous (or desperate) enough to try eating it took a liking to.

I'd expect the latter to be the story here: hard cheeses like Pecorino keep a while until they're "open" and you start eating them, and it's not a huge cheese (I believe pecorino wheels are under 2kg, we're not talking the 30+ wheels of a parmesan or comte).

Or maybe sardinia regularly has conditions where the cheese can't be kept and so a controlled decomposition was superior to just losing the cheese.

> there are times where calories > no calories regardless of the source

I have a friend who was in a forced-labor camp and this pretty much sums it up. I recall him describing that the "meat" they were given was usually so rotten than the only way they could stomach it was to basically cover it in chili peppers to mask the taste and smell. But it kept them alive.

I've always suspected my periodic craving for Vegemite is simply due to salt deficiency. Those that didn't grow up with Vegemite tend to find it disgusting but a craving for Vegemite is a well known thing in Australia where you can sweat out huge quantities of salt on a typical summers day.

These weird foods probably have concentrations of various things that you simply won't see in anywhere else. Salt appetite is a proven and understood phenomenon but i bet there's similar things going on in all of these foods. You try it once and probably don't like it then and there and then one day your brain brings up the memory of that food and tells you to go eat it again.

It's probably an ancient survival mechanism. If you eat the food nobody else wants you have better chances of survival.

That's how "acquired tastes" develop physiologically and culture takes care of passing it down the generations.

Probably desperation. Someone left a cheese around too long and didn’t have anything else to eat. Cheese itself is pretty gross as a concept, at least until you get enough experience cultivating the right kinds of fungus.

> Cheese itself is pretty gross as a concept, at least until you get enough experience cultivating the right kinds of fungus.

A basic cheese doesn't involve any fungus...?

Many cheeses contains fungi like Penicillium [1], think blue cheese etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillium

Huh you’re right, I guess the acidification is usually bacterial. Same story though.

Eh, as a Korean I've eaten Hongeo hoe ("raw skate") - while it has a distinct flavor of ammonia, it's nothing to write home about. (I dunno, maybe the authentic ones sold at the region may have stronger taste.) There are stuff I'd be much more reluctant to try, like boiled silkworm pupae[1].

Maybe it helps that I never licked a urinal, so I have no idea what a urinal tastes like.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beondegi

I've tried the silkworm. It's... not very good.

Monggae bibimbap had a lot of ammonia, but there were some pleasing elements. I can't remember if I've tried hongeo hoe, but I can imagine it could have some appeal.

Of course, all of these things are insane to the average Midwestern US person that I might encounter.

I'm repulsed by durian. It smells like a dumpster on a hot day to me. But apparently people really do like it, versus just eating it as some sort of social signal. Maybe it's like the cilantro thing where some people are genetically prone to think it tastes like soap?

Interesting, I quite like Durian. I think it smells like a gas leak (which isn’t per se “disgusting”), but tastes pretty good.

I was under the impression gas leaks are supposed to be foul smelling, since the gas itself doesn't have an odor, and they add a foul-smelling additive for safety purposes.

At least to me, durian has a sulfur smell, but it’s not strong and not that different from say cooked broccoli.

To me it’s like a strong creamy cheese. But I could see how some people find it unappetizing.

I can’t stand jackfruit any more. I used to love it, but now it just smells like the fake lemon smell of soap.

Gas (or rather the additive we talk about here) itself also does not smell "foul" to me. Intense and very distinct, but not foul, or disgusting.

I’d never heard of cilantro tasting like soap. Had to look that up:

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-cilantro-taste-lik...

Thanks for teaching me something new.

To me, coriander leaves smell like stinkbugs. Soap would actually be a great improvement.

To me it tastes nice and creamy, with hints of rotten onion on a hot day.

Oh my I looooove durian! To the point that it is difficult for me to understand why one wouldn't like it.

But many people don't like it indeed, so I must accept this as a fact.

It really does smell like rotting meat to me, and smell is very intertwined with taste for me. Though I do like some pungent things, like sardines. I can't explain it either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I grew up in Southeast Asia and durian never smelled bad to me. Pungent and strong, yes, but not bad. It definitely does not remind me of a dumpster.

kinda like the perfumed armpits of a hot chick

There are two types of durians. One which is supposed to be eaten as a fruit when ripe, other which is supposed to be cooked into a dish when raw. When used for the wrong purpose, they taste horrible. Otherwise, the ripe fruit of right variety is sweet, and the dish of the right variety tastes acceptable.

https://satwcomic.com/icelandic-cookbook

this is actually not as disgusting as it looks.

Most of the food we eat have come to be through centuries of iterations to make it better tasting, safer, easier to preserve, etc. or simply edible.

For example olives taste really bad in nature, to make them tasty there are different ways, including immerse them in a solution of water and caustic soda or water and burnt lime, which are highly toxic substances.

I can't even wrap my head around how someone thought it was a good idea, but however the procedure was invented, it worked and we can now experience the amazing taste of sweet olives.

Or think about meat hanging (dry aging) where meat is aged for weeks before being eaten.

it may have been an accidental discovery. a bunch of olives fell near a vat of the said ingredients, someone was brave enough to try it...and survived +/ found it good!

Wonder if it's for the same reasons as this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl

Fermented foods really make you wonder how crazy and/or desperate the ancients were. You have to do a lot of things wrong along the lines of storing surplus grain to even come up with something as tame as beer.

Greenland has its own fermented cartilaginous fish, Hakarl. At least twice in culinary history, someone decided that letting a shark or skate sit somewhere long enough to get WEIRD and start reeking of piss so badly that it hurts wasn't such a bad idea and eating it might be okay. Crazy.

The really crazy part is how those sharks are toxic until they’ve fermented.

There’s definitely a story of desperate starvation in there somewhere.

Food you consider "disgusting" mostly has to do with survival, and often deadly famines, rather than childish dares.

I assume this describes the process:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/craproot

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