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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Celery is one of the main vegetables in mirepoix (an essential part of French and French-influenced cooking), soffritto (an essential part of Italian cooking used for most sauces), and is also used in many soups, stocks, and stews. I think you like it a lot more than you realize; you're just only thinking of eating it whole, raw.

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Even raw it can be lovely, very finely diced into something like egg or chicken salad. It adds a bit of savory crunch, a lightness and some of that aromatic zip.

Finely diced pickle can do the same thing though, for people who really hate celery.

Perhaps there is a generic situation at play? Cilantro to me tastes like soap, and celery to me tastes like grass mixed with paint thinner. I can't tolerate it in any form.

But I love to cook and adore every other vegetable. Just celery and cilantro are abhorrent to my palate.

Hey fellow cilantro-sufferer, I also have that reaction to it. I love so much of the food it's in though, and cooks often struggle to understand that it isn't pickiness, it's vile to me. I... also find large amounts of raw celery to be unpleasant, although I like it well chopped into a rich mayo-based salad. Still you can barely taste in in there.

I think you might be on to something.

Well, carrot, celery, and cilantro (coriander) all share a common ancestor and it's not too fanciful to suppose that they might contain the same compounds that trigger people who have the aldehyde-detecting gene (ORA62) that is responsible for the dislike of cilantro.

There was a study written up here where the authors sequenced the cilantro genome and compared it to other plants, if you want to go down this rabbit hole.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7206992/

Wow! Well this explains why carrot tastes like soap to me too, but no one ever talks about soapy carrot flavor!

I love a good rabbit hole, and I didn't know about the common ancestry. Thanks!

Damn, i feel for you not ever knowwing how truly amazing cilantro is.

This is pretty common, I can taste even very small amounts as a soapy flavor. I think it’s genetic, a chef I met once said they take a test for it in school so they know for sure but if you have it there’s really no doubt. Fwiw celery tastes good to me so they are probably unrelated phenomena.

I'll eat it in specific contexts: chinichurri and salsa verde, which have sufficient garlic to mask the taste. But I do feel a bit wistful that I can't truly enjoy it.

> tastes like grass mixed with paint thinner

How does one acquire the necessary reference point to make such a determination?

I have a serious answer to that question... and its name is "Bison Grass Vodka, from Russia."

I’m not aware of a bison grass vodka from Russia. I quite like the Polish bison grass vodka (Żubrówka). Though perhaps that’s your point.. the Russian variant having notes of paint thinner?

The bison grass mostly adds coumarin as a flavor component, which is the same component that gives Tonka beans their main flavor (also the popular Waldmeister in Germany). Personally a fan of that Vodka, never found it tastes anything like grass. But maybe we talk about a different one, I only know the polish one from Zubrowka.

By associating their smell?

I know what rocket fuel mixed with coffee tastes like ... you can guess how that reference point was acquired.

As another comment said, I'm guessing on the taste of paint thinner from its smell.

For me it's cruciferous veg. Broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc. Even smelling them makes me nauseous.

There's this traditional Norwegian dish called fårikål. Literally means "mutton in cabbage". Cooked in a casserole for hours. It's the freaking national dish too. This shit is so fragrant, if someone at the table next to me orders it my appetite is basically gone.

Right, it's an "aromatic," and many dishes wouldn't taste right without it. Or, if you only ever eat dishes that don't call for it, I feel sorry for you.

Yet, all dishes taste bad with it.

Do you like soup? Most European soups taste better with some sautéed celery in them. (Or taste worse if the cook neglects their celery.)

Of course I'm assuming you are getting decent, flavorful celery, not water-logged cardstock.

To me, all dishes with celery taste worse. I can't stand the flavor or smell of it. When I'm cooking, I always omit it. I'm not a picky eater otherwise.

Celery has nice texture, not nice flavor.

thats entirely subjective, I love the flavor of celery

No, it fouls soups. I always know if there is a trace of it. As the other commenter remarked, lighter fluid. Or turpentine. It gets worse cooked.

I've heard there's a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap to people who have it. Being that celery and cilantro are related, I wonder if there's something similar going on? Celery certainly doesn't taste anything remotely like lighter fluid or turpentine to me. Maybe even the same gene?

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