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> In 1544, physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli described the leaves as smelling like bed bugs or stink bugs...
Incredible that neither this, nor the other linked article, even mention the fact that this stink-bug/soap taste is genetically predetermined for some people [1], so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.
Instead, the real story is probably much more interesting, as the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place.
I think you may have falsely pattern matched this particular reference. I love the taste and smell of cilantro and eat it all the time, but the first time I encountered a stink bug I thought "oh, it smells like cilantro".
It doesn't taste like soap to me. I think the stink bug-smell has no relation to the soap-taste, which is indeed caused by that gene. I think stink bugs' scent probably smells similar to cilantro for everyone without that gene.
I keep hearing this, but my personal experience refutes this. I first encountered cilantro at the age of 15 and I immediately thought my soup bowl has unwashed soap in it. I did not eat cilantro-included dishes for years after, but fast forward 2 decades and I love cilantro now. I can't really detect the soapyness that once bothered me so much.
I don't think cilantro preferences are as set in stone as the story alludes.
I vaguely remember reading something similar about stevia.
Anecdotally, I know some people who think it's a tasty sweetener, but for me it just tastes bitter and awful. When I add it to coffee, it ends up tasting like I added a mixture of Splenda and powdered graphite.
To be honest that is one of the most repeated "TIL" I see on the internet, so I was happy to not have to read it again!
I think the "it was native and abundant so nobody used it because it didn't demonstrate wealth" explanation is far more plausible given that the same can be observed with many native plants and spices in other parts of Europe.
TFA mentions that spices were categorized as "sweet or strong" and given that coriander was seen as "strong" it competed with fancier imports. This preference likely "trickled down" making the spice seem less appealing to the masses, especially with increased social mobility in more recent history.
My wife and I stayed in a hotel once which we later discovered was infested with bed bugs. We were thankfully able to prevent spreading them to our home by running everything through a very hot dryer multiple times and thorough inspection of our luggage.
I love cilantro but that room absolutely smelled like it.
It also smelled like my best friend growing up's house, which I commented on when we first entered the room after checking in. I had always assumed the smell was from their foreign cuisine, but I have been curious since this experience if they perhaps had a bedbug problem.
> so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.
It can be if the person who was genetically predetermined to dislike the taste was influential. I agree that this interpretation would require additional evidence to presume, but the above quote certainly does not preclude such a possibility.
Most importantly, much of culture is determined by taste outside of genetic disposition. I don't see much reason to see this scenario as removed from the influence of culture.
This is very interesting! According to the article, the gene makes people either like cilantro or hate it entirely. I used to hate cilantro in my childhood as it smelled exactly like a stink bug to me. But it's the opposite in my adulthood. Cilantro enhances the savory taste, both in its raw and cooked form.
> the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place
It's not impossible, but without data it's pure conjecture. The first study I found isn't particularly supportive, unless there's been massive immigration from East Asia that I'm not aware of: https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/20...
Well, half of my friends like cilantro, the other half say it tastes like dish soap. I'm in Italy and by the way I'm sowing it today (too late, probably.)
The issue of if cilantro tastes like soap, weather that be genetic or not, we can't ignore that if cilantro was common at the time, people would have grown up eating it, and would have been used to the taste.
There also was likely less concept of individual preference in the food you ate. The food was made for the family, and you either ate it, or you didn't eat.
Even I had to live through this with boiled brussel sprouts as a kid.
I think a hunk of ginger in some food tastes like soap.
It's weird, I find the taste really fresh and fruity <3
People take genetic determinism way too seriously, and that original "Why Cilantro Tastes Like Soap" NYT article has been aggressively misused to justify a generation of picky eaters. It's tragic how many people miss out on an incredible food because they believe it is their genetic destiny to never like it.
That genetic predisposition only really matters for your first exposures to cilantro. I used to abhor the taste and found if completely vile, but after having more friends from cilantro heavy cultures I kept trying it, and trying it and trying it.
It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes. You don't need "general genetic pool changes" in order for cilantro to become more widely adopted, you just need enough people who like it to encourage those who initially don't to give it a few more tries.
If you're someone who genuinely likes exploring new foods and flavors and have let that silly article convince you that you are doomed to never enjoy cilantro, keep exploring, you'll find reward. If you're a picky-eater, that's fine, just tone down on the genetic determinism.
In general, most cuisines and culinary trends are far more modern than we tend to assume. Until the last 3-ish centuries:
Italy didn't have tomatoes or basil. Nor was there corn for polenta. India didn't have chilies. The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.
> Nor was there corn for polenta
Before corn, polenta was made with barley: https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/a...
> The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.
True, but fwiw I wouldn't consider potato to be particularly important in German cuisine. Sure you'll see it used quite a bit, but many of the more iconic dishes don't really need them or can be replaced like with bread dumplings for instance.
India also didn’t have tomatoes until it was brought over by the Portuguese, at least this is what I learned in my travels there.
AFAIK India didn't have corn either. Like chilies and potatoes and a few other plants, it came from the Americas.
Tomatoes, maize, chillies, and potatoes (3 are nightshade) and came during the Colombian exchange.
Basil has been used across Eurasia for far longer. Certainly a lot earlier than 3 centuries ago. For Millenia in the Mediterranean.
Didn't Italy get noodles from Asia relatively recently
Rather than being peculiarly modern, I think probably most cultures have always been much less stable and more changing than we tend to assume, even before modernity.
The history of global cuisines is a testament to the dynamic nature of food culture
It seems Christopher Columbus did more for gastronomy than thousands of chefs.
Don’t forget chocolate and (though it wasn’t a New World plant) vanilla.
Yeah, I always find this fact + people saying "America" has no unique food culture to be quite funny in tandem.
Of course the United States does have unique food culture beyond that juxtaposition, but still.
I'm somewhat surprised that the article's list of conjectures didn't include one: that Italian Parsley may have just been viewed as superior for all use cases (which IMHO it kinda is, outside of Mexican recipes.)
Don't forget asian food!
I feel the opposite: Cilantro is superior in all cases except perhaps Italian food, and even Italian food I am skeptical that Cilantro could be better if not for a bias from tradition.
Parsley tastes so bitter and one-dimensional and you have to remove the leaves from the stem, whereas Cilantro is aromatic, fresh, and you can eat the stems making it trivial to prepare. I even go so far as to substitute cilantro for leafy greens in salad.
That's a pretty bonkers statement. Cilantro is much more used worldwide (by about an order of magnitude). They look very similar, but don't taste anything alike. You might as well say basil is better than oregano. It's just not a very meaningful statement.
In a lot of the world flavor is about stacking complex flavors to get a melange of them. With the establishment of the top end of European cooking as French haute cuisine, there was instead an emphasis on simple, clear flavors. In that style, parsley, as a much more subtle herb, shines.
The article doesn't really answer the "why" part. Basically, it sounds like there were a lot of small things, mostly changing culinary influences. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why they lost their taste for cilantro but not other herbs. Don't get me wrong, I liked learning the history, but it's a bad headline.
I think it gives the answer but very briefly - "It clashed with expensive foreign spices". Essentially the Italian cuisine that formed wasn't really compatible with coriander.
I like coriander but my general sense is there aren't any Italian dishes I'd want to add it to whereas it's perfect with many Mexican, Indian and Chinese dishes I know of.
“medieval Italians divided spices into two categories: sweet and strong”
it’s funny because german language sometimes has this division as well: süß and pikant ; although pikant in a modern sense means a bit spicy
It's the same in modern Italian: dolce (sweet) and piccante (spicy/strong)
The leaves taste like dishwashing shampoo. But the seeds are great. We mix them with green and black pepper.
Coriander, if you forgot what cilantro is.
In the US coriander typically refers to the seeds, which do not have the offensive flavor of the leaves.
Cilantro falling out of favor from Ancient Rome is minor compared to Silphium which was an extremely popular Roman plant that went extinct, and nobody today knows what it was. Also Asafoetida, Liquamen, and Garum. Garum production was a large industry in Ancient Rome. Today, while there are some ostensibly traditional fish sauces made in parts of Italy, nobody knows for certain how Garum was made in Ancient Rome or if extant methods are related.
> says Karima Moyer-Nocchi, a culinary historian
What a fascinating profession. In Italy of all places! My guess is they are sought after at cocktail parties.
In Portugal it’s used quite a lot in the south in pork dishes, in a kind of bread soup (açorda) and also in a famous clam dish (bulhão pato-style clams). In the north it was very hard to find until 2 or 3 decades ago, and parsley is used a lot more.
My Italian American family uses a lot of both cilantro and parsley, sometimes mixed together. I think they started shopping at local Mexican butchers for things like tripe and offal and maybe took on some of that cuisine culture.
It's entirely their loss. Coriander/cilantro is very good for sound mental health. Refer to PMC10385770.
If you complain of a soapy taste, you're either using it wrong, or it's your genes, possibly both.
In Australia I learned not to eat two things: vegemite and cilantro.
didn’t read tfa but my daughter has always hated cilantro saying it tasted like stink bugs. about 12 here’s ago she was diagnosed with celiac disease. It was kind of crippling as a family to figure out how we could holiday together outside of packaging and carrying along foods. We discovered Italy is extremely celiac friendly as it is a nationally recognized disease.
I wonder if there’s any correlation between celiac and or related auto immune diseases and celiac palate.
I have that silly gene that makes Cilantro taste like soap so the less cilantro is in food the better for me.
And yeah, tastes distinctly and strongly like soap.
s/Italy/Greece. Virtually absent from mainstream cuisine
I just came here to say "Coriander"