• bizarroland@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    My stepdad once made coleslaw that smelled like burnt rubber. Me and my siblings told him that we would not eat the coleslaw, it would taste like burnt rubber. And he tried to convince us that since we had never eaten burnt rubber before in the past, that we couldn’t possibly know what burnt rubber tastes like, and therefore we should eat the coleslaw.

    It turned into an hours-long argument about how you don’t have to actually eat burnt rubber in order to know what burnt rubber smells like, and that there’s no good reason for coleslaw to smell like burnt rubber.

    In the end, me and my siblings won, and we did not eat the coleslaw, but I don’t understand how you can cook coleslaw… no, wait, you don’t even cook coleslaw!

    I don’t know how you can prepare coleslaw so poorly as to have it smell like burnt rubber, and I don’t know how you can be so married to your burnt rubber coleslaw that you would attempt to force children to eat it, regardless of the fact that it smells like burnt fucking rubber.

    • SlurpingPus@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I once ate some canned olives that smelled like something gasoline-adjacent. Those were the most outstandingly tasty olives I’ve ever had, by far.

    • daannii@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Perception researcher here. So you probably are aware that if you have a stuffy nose, your food taste different.

      Well. Technically what you experience when eating is a combination of smell and taste sensations.

      Molecules from food in your mouth travel up your throat into nasal cavities. And of course. Can come in through the nose.

      This combination perception is called “flavor”. That’s the technical term. Although this word often means “taste” in layman.

      Anyway. My point is. That smell heavily influences flavor.

      Which is what a lot of people think of as “taste” but taste is exclusively tongue receptors.

      So your argument is sound. The experience of the smell is a strong indicator of the flavor.

    • mech@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      My only guess how that’s possible would be to put a frozen cabbage into a very bad blender, overheating its motor.

      • daannii@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Cooked cabbage can smell quite strange. And bad. Only way I think cabbage is good cooked is briefly stir fried with bacon. That’s it.

        Anything else or longer and it starts to smell super bad.

          • daannii@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Yeah my grandma used to make boiled chicken and cabbage. I just really hated the smell. Idk if I could like a strew. But maybe.

        • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org
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          1 day ago

          Sauerkraut is nice though. But that’s adding extra steps and I wouldn’t still call it cabbage when the cooking starts.

          • SlurpingPus@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            Boiling cabbage is just ruining the product. The only good way to prepare cabbage is to marinate it with vinegar, shredded carrots and beets, optionally adding some coriander.

              • SlurpingPus@lemmy.world
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                3 hours ago

                What’s the defining good quality of cabbage when it comes to the texture? Because the watery taste is nothing particular to write home about. It’s rather the fact that it’s crunchy! And it stays crunchy when marinated! Unlike the spongy mess of boiled cabbage.

                It also takes on the flavor from carrots and beets, turning the whole thing into delicious sour-sweet crunchy cocktail.

            • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org
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              6 hours ago

              There are more varieties though. Cabbage soup comes to mind, for example, and some stuff that I don’t know an English word for.
              Some of that can taste great as well, but if you don’t care for the taste of cooked cabbage, it’s probably not for you.