What's That Smell?

The readers of this blog being a sophisticated, well-travelled bunch, I was not surprised to get a number of more or less instant replies to my post about my son's encounter with some emetically-flavoured ice cream, Durian. Typical was this response from an old friend, Dave, who has family in Malaysia:

It is, to be sure, an acquired taste - one that I have, after 26 visits, yet to acquire. I have been advised to pinch my nose and simply taste, but that didn't work. In markets across Malaysia you'll find specialist durian vendors, with heaped stalls that announce their presence from far away. In the posher hotels you'll find notices that read 'No Durian, no Mangosteen': the former stinks, the latter stains.

Well, you can imagine that hoteliers wouldn't want their overseas guests complaining that some serial killer appeared to have been concealing dismembered body parts somewhere in their room. And, dear god, what's that on the sheets?

As it happens, I have no sense of smell. Or rather, I have virtually no sense of smell, but can detect a very few smells in an untypical way. For example, cucumber is repulsive to me – I pretty much have to leave the room – but I usually find that most "bad" smells are either undetectable (inodorate?) or inoffensive to me. Whether this counts as a disability or a superpower depends on the circumstances, of course, and I have yet to test my negative capability against the extreme durian challenge.

But it's the taste of durian that seems elusive. I'm hearing "rich custard", "sweet and melon like", "strawberries and cream sitting on a toilet", etc. It is curious how imprecise our language becomes when describing tastes: AFAIK there is no gustatory equivalent to, say, Pantone for colours ("Yes, durian is Uniflav 4573E"). Not surprising, really, given the many variables in play. The best Wikipedia can do with the highly-esteemed flavour of the mangosteen fruit, for example, is "slightly sweet and sour", although the fruit's aroma is a different matter:

Often described as a subtle delicacy, the flesh bears an exceptionally mild aroma, quantitatively having about 1/400th of the chemical constituents of fragrant fruits, explaining its relative mildness. The main volatile components having caramel, grass and butter notes as part of the mangosteen fragrance are hexyl acetate, hexenol and α-copaene. Ethyl octanoate, ethyl hexanoate and 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol were detected as aroma components in mangosteen wine.

Ah, right, got it now... It was the "grass" and 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol that had me confused (I prefer to call it prenylthiol!). I thought we were talking about skunk-flavoured popcorn.

But perhaps the most relevant response came from another old friend, Rob, who has also spent time in South-East Asia:

I was on a 42 hour bus trip from Vietnam to Laos. In the remote mountains, it was hard to find villages to get something to eat. We had a stop in Dien Bien Phu early in the morning where I bought some snacks and a packet of sugary fruit sweets. They were fine until I tried one of the Durian flavours. It’s probably what you get at the gates of Hell and tasted nothing like the fruit. It had a slightly sulphurous taste.

So it seems that however (and from whatever) "durian" flavouring is made – I assume it's not "natural" in any meaningful sense – it ends up tasting like shit. It's as if "banana" turned to ashes in your mouth when used to flavour a milkshake or toothpaste. Why anyone would choose to put this substance into an up-market ice cream is a mystery. Although it has to be said that I feel much the same about most chemically-enhanced snacks: a deep-fried extruded potato-dough shape is bad enough, but that spray-on fake tan of MSG-dust is a step too far, and I (luckily) can't even smell the horrible things.

Although, who knows? Maybe "durian" will yet turn out to be the new "pulled pork". In a well-known phrase or saying, there's no accounting for taste. After all, as that same well-travelled friend added:

The worst is Surströmming, a Swedish dish of fermented fish in a can. You have to open it under water because the smell makes Durian smell like Chanel N°5. I tried it in a friend’s kitchen which opens onto the street. As soon as I tried some, I bolted to the door to spit it into the street.

Smells bad and tastes bad? Yum! From Wikipedia again:

German food critic and author Wolfgang Fassbender wrote that "the biggest challenge when eating surströmming is to vomit only after the first bite, as opposed to before".

Hmm, Surströmming ice cream in a well-sealed tub... Why not? But please don't attempt to open or eat it on the premises.