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Comment by anyfoo | Hacker News Reader

Now do chocolate. The first time I tasted Hershey's chocolate was... interesting, to say the least. For the uninitiated: It tastes like vomit. No, I'm not being purposefully annoying, it literally tastes like vomit. And that's entirely unsurprising, because apparently whatever process they use produces butyric acid.

I got over it in small quantities. I can eat Hershey's Kisses, which are rather tiny, and the vomit is now just an expected by-taste that works in small doses.

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Adam Ragusea has an excellent video on this very topic - "Why Hershey bars taste like vomit (and I love them)" : https://youtu.be/J44svaQc5WY

Funny how butyric acid was actually named after butter, and is found in butter among other things, yet butter tastes wonderful and vomit is (literally) disgusting.

And also why the butyl rubber handles on your fancy power tools will eventually end up smelling like vomit. Always an odd design choice to see.

Hershey's is truly disgusting, but do not get me started on the absolutely unjustified reverence the Brits have for a mediocre-at-best chocolate like Cadbury's...

Cadbury's has never been treated as anything other than a "chocolate for the masses". It was however, a pretty decent middle-of-the-road chocolate. Until it got bought out. Now it's shite.

Cadbury's has always been the sort of standard cheap block in Australia for my whole life (I'm in my 30s). Nobody ever considered it especially good (though having tasted Hershey's chocolate it is better than that), but having said that it definitely used to be better than it is now

Do Budweiser next, then McDonalds and Lipton.

Any other cheap corporate garbage from last century you want to sneer at? :p

The problem with tea in the US is less the brands available and more that on ordering you are often brought a cup of rapidly cooling hot water with a tea bag by the side. While fine for herbal or green tea it's terrible for standard black tea which tastes so much better when you pour the boiling water directly onto the tea bag.

Check out Indian and Iranian styles of making tea.

First, the traditional method doesn't use tea bags. You boil the water, add the tea leaves or tea dust, at start or end, as you prefer. Then strain, and add milk and sugar.

Iranian style tea (at least in India, as found in the few remaining Irani restaurants) is boiled for longer, and has a stronger and very distinctive taste.

In the Indian style, powdered spices like cardamom and cloves are often added. So is ginger.

This is usually called masala chai, and, for foreigners, it is not called chai tea. That would be like saying tea tea, because chai mean tea in Hindi. It is pronounced like hai.

Those taste bland (though McDonald's isn't that bad, I like their fries), not actively repulsing.

I generally dislike McDonald's and will only eat there as an absolute last resort. But I pretty much wish all the "fast casual" burger places like Shake Shack would make fries like McDonalds because, while their burgers are universally way better than McDonald's, their fries are almost all decidedly not.

Folgers coffee?

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