I always thought Parmesan smelled like sick. But I figured that soft cheeses often smell foul too and yet were delicious when I ate them. It’s a funny thing.
Another huge smell similar to me is White Pepper seasoning REEKS like a Horse to me (but no one in my family agreed). I looked it up and found out the main chemical compound called "4-methylphenol" in white pepper is also found in high quantities in horse sweat! It was just nice to be right against my whole family who didn't believe me. 😂
My girlfriend likes to cook strawberries to make a sort of compote that she likes to have with yogurt or ice cream, and we both joke that it makes the kitchen smell exactly like weed, until you look at it. When you see the food, your perception of the smell snaps back to hot strawberries.
Too funny... my whole life I thought parmesan cheese was vomit! I would come home from work and my wife would be cooking, I had no idea what that horrific smell was, and my first thought was 'vomit!', oh no one of the kids was sick! And then I'd internally dry reach before I knew it was parmesan... and my brain tried to get me to believe it was all ok (but it was not - still stank like vomit...) Now I know!!
It reminded me of a discussion I had with my grandmother years ago. Garlic smells good in dishes (well, it does for us), but a person smelling like garlic is repulsive This particular case may also be social though. Garlicky smell from a person generally doesn't indicate a disease (I believe it may, but it's way more likely that they just ate garlic for breakfast), and we could be ok with it if we weren't taught that thet it's a bad thing
One issue is that the smell od garlic, if it's being expressed (produced) by a person will have been slightly altered from the original If you eat enough garlic to smell like garlic your body is dealing with the sulfur compounds by changing them, so the smell is different If you handle garlic, but don't eat it, your hands will smell great, but if you eat enough to make your skin smell it will smell like rancid garlic since your body is breaking it down.
@ConstantChaos1 I think more about garlicky smell from the mouth, but I guess it's the same thing (I assume that you need to eat truly a lot of garlic for your skin to smell of it, but I believe the way your breath smells like garlic is the same, it's not just dirty teeth), so makes sense
The chemical in cilantro is an aldehyde, and is also what is in stink bugs. Another one I know from brewing/fermenting is that some yeasts produce diacetyl, especially at higher temperatures, and this can cause a rancid buttery flavor in your beer. But apparently if you have this in a beer you brew, the yeast can eventually metabolize it, so just let the beer age a while!
I've always read about cilantro tasting like soap to some people online, but for me it was always stinkbugs. In fact, one time I had a sip of soda which grossed me out since it tasted like cilantro, and when I looked, a stinkbug had fallen in it! Not fun at all.
My nephew (he was 8 or 9 at the time) once found an Easter egg in the back yard, about a week *BEFORE* Easter. As if that was not bad enough, we didn't have a hunt in the back yard the Easter before. That egg had been in the back yard at least 2 years. Knowing what he would do I told him to put the egg onto the outside garbage can. And to be careful *NOT* to break it. I was surprised when he came back and said, "I wish I had listened to you.
Hah well that’s one way to learn about what time does to food, might’ve put him off eating eggs for a while…at least that’s what happens if i eat / smell something that stayed in fridge for too long
This video was extremely validating to me. I never grew up eating parmesan so I've only had it for the first time around 5 years ago. And ever since then I've always hated it because it smelled so much like vomit to me, especially the pregrounded stuff. The taste itself is actually fine but the smell is overpowering enough that it ruins a plate of spaghetti when I throw parmesan on it. And people have always just looked at me like I'm crazy whenever I pointed out the vomit smell, but I might just be more genetically dispositioned for that then, just like the soap cilantro people. I do think I enjoy parmesan when it's melted, so I'm guessing the heat breaks down some of the acid. Either way I'll just stick to throwing gouda on my pasta instead for the forseeable future
Michael Pollan discussed how fermented foods are culturally specific. Stinky cheeses. Fish sauce. Strong, authentic kimchi. If you didn’t grow up with it, chances are you’ll think it’s gross.
It's not just parmesan, pretty much every cheese that isn't fresh contains butyrric acid, as can other things like beer or wine, where it is often considered a defect, except for some lambic beers
I drank a sour beer once that tasted so strong it felt like it was burning my tastebuds. Afaik a "farmhouse sour" is a beer seeded with naturally occurring bacteria that sour the brew
The bacteria in Parmigian cheese makes butyric acid from the cleaving of esters by releasing hydrogen chloride which frees it. The isovaleric acid is created from the fermentation itself, specifically from cassien protien.
Don't I know this. I work janitorial. I actually have a disdain for smells that I can't visualize it's origin. It doesn't mean that when trash smells good, that I'm okay with it. Especially when I know what's in there. I also have an aunt that dislikes the smell of cinnamon because she associates it with the smell of butt.
One of my old college buddies has always called Parm, stinky-feet cheese. I've never claimed my sense of smell was particularly keen but I've always thought that was mostly humorous exaggeration, but this video changed my mind. I still have no problem with the green container parm even after it's been sitting in the fridge for several months.
Decades ago, I played this video game called ty the tasmanian tiger 2. In it, there is a line when ty delivers lunch to some workers who then go on to complain about the smell and ty blames it on the Parmesan cheese. I NEVER understood why they put this into the game because parmesan has never stunk to me before. To the point that one day I went up to my mom's fridge to smell the Parmesan cheese to see what they were talking about, and still couldn't smell anything. Now I can see why they did. Thank you for clarifying this decades old mystery.
As a Brit I can confirm the thing about Hershey's chocolate, I've eaten exactly one piece on my first trip to the US about 20 years ago and will never eat a second. The weird thing is, I will eat parmesan by the kilo and I didn't have that until I was an adult either.
It's social conditioning. You've probably eaten tons of parm before you ever got to try chocolate, and while you associate those funky tastes with cheese, you haven't been culturally prepared to associated them with chocolate. It's true with lots of stuff, if you don't have the cultural familiarity with certain foods they can be inedible to you because their taste profile is something you associate with something different and that mixture between them is...offputting. But it's very similar to most people needing to get used to softer, stinkier cheeses. They are gross and inedible to most people who didn't grow up with them until they push through that feeling and get used to it.
A ton of Americans literally can't detect it. I grew up near a chocolate company that made great chocolate and so I always found Hersheys to be kinda vile. But I had friends who genuinely didn't notice how much better the good chocolate was
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Hersey’s is definitely low quality chocolate to me but, I know people who love it. like it’s never my first choice unless i’m making s’mores specifically but, I feel like that’s more due to marketing than a preference for taste.
@@Tinil0 I wish I had eaten tons of parmesan before I did, but as I said I sadly only had it as an adult, possibly even after the Hershey's. There may be some social conditioning, Americans are conditioned that it's perfectly fine if your chocolate bar tastes like vomit. Whereas in Europe we are taught that if chocolate tastes like that then there is something very, very wrong with it. But I think it really comes more down to preparidness and familiarity... When I tried parmesan, I kinda knew what I was in for and expected it to be a lot less pleasant than it was. When I was offered a piece of Hershey's, I *thought* I knew what to expect. But nobody had told me of the terrible things Americans do to their poor chocolate... I actually thought it was a prank at first lol.
As a brit living in the USA I can confirm there is very good chocolate to be found here, but not by any large companies. Hershey's chocolate is absolute garbage. Disgusting.
This explains why i had to add a large amount of spices to my storebought pasta to make it somewhat edible. I wasn't lying when i told them it smelled like vomit.
when i was a kid in like elementary school, they had pasta for lunch sometimes and the first time i put the cheap packet of parm on it i thought it tasted like vomit and idk why people liked it. nowadays im mostly fine with the cheap fake stuff on pasta so i guess i became a fan of it as a grew older
Working in a micro lab I have occasionally experienced what I call a “work smell” registering as a food smell and I usually take that as a cue it’s well past time for lunch lol
i remember once i was enjoying a dinner with my family when i had to guiltily admit that i absolutely could not stomach the food. it tasted delicious, i clarified, but something inside it SMELLED like puke. i wasn't tasting it when i was eating it (so it was clearly a substance that didn't release the smell when chewed,) but i could smell it just enough that i felt put off from the entire dish. we identified that it was probably the blue cheese in the salad and i was gracefully excused from what would have otherwise been an abhorrent insult to their cooking lol.
We had a perfume bottle explode in a bathroom. It was difficult to get rid of the smell at first, but once I reasoned that the odors in perfumes are typically alcohol extracts, I was able to eliminate them with some effort. My strategy for cleaning pungent smells, soap and water followed by isopropyl alcohol, and again with one last round of soap and water.
Story time: I had bought a fragrance (room) spray that was covered in white and orange colorations. I couldn't find the name of the smell but I assumed it was citrus of some nature. When I got home and smelled it, I was disgusted by the smell and I had stowed it away for 2 years before I decided to throw it out. But before discarding it, I tried to determine the smell again. That is when I noticed "Coffee" written in smaller letters somewhere on the can. Coffee!? I sprayed it again and smelled a coffee-like smell. This same coffee-like smell smelled good. Well, it smelled as expected, which was good. The expected citrus smell of two years ago, which it was not, was terrible and disgusting. Same smell. Different expectations. Different levels of "pleasure"
withe the parmesean confusion thing, one time there was a fire in our back yeard and when i smelt it i thought it was barbeque and asked my dad if he was grilling and he was like "... no?" and then we went outside and looked at the back and there was a giant grassfire
Disgust is something that you generate in your mind (even if your body reacts physically, it is driven by you telling yourself that you are disgusted). It isn't difficult at all to convince yourself that something good is actually gross. It is a little more difficult to overcome your own bias to convince yourself that something gross is actually good, but it is certainly possible.
Also, we perceive smells different depending on whether we smell something 'normally' through our nostrils, and retronasaly, from the back of the throat. it's why Blue Cheese tastes different than it smells.
One time I was handed a bowl of Velveeta cheese flavored ice cream and was then asked to guess the flavor. It tasted like salted caramel and was kinda nice. As soon as I found out, it was really harf to eat. I thought if I kept eating it, I'd get used to it, and I kinda did, but every single time I remembered what it was, it just became nasty again
Something that might be fun to look into, but caution because of how long it might take to test, check out Stinky Tofu. It is fermented Tofu, so it will smell like something died (which technically, something did), but it is delicious. People who enjoy the taste come to enjoy the smell, whereas people who never smelt it before will recoil like you served them something from the landfill. I would be interested in hearing more about the scientific part of it, where you break down what it is that produces that pungent smell, and where else that smell can be found, but also to see if you could/would come to enjoy the smell. Similar to the Parmesan smell getting confused, Stinky Tofu will usually have other spices mixed with the smell, so people who enjoy eating it will also pick up those notes and know the smell is Stinky Tofu and not roadkill. It's always interesting to walk the Night Market in Taiwan and come across that section where they sell Stinky Tofu. There's a certain perimeter of smell where some people walk through, and others recoil. Even if they know it's just a food, if they don't like Stinky Tofu, they still avoid the smell. Kind of like the Cilantro/Soap taste thing.
I never had the heart to tell my mom the real reason why i don't want parmesan when we're having dinner. Thanks for reassuring me about the scientific accuracy when I now go bring up vomit while we're eating spaghetti
I used to work in a lab that used Benzaldehyde for whatever reason which has an almond-like smell and whenever I ate almond cookies during that time I was reminded of work.
Fun Fact. I was filing down calluses on my feet, and noticed the filings look like the pre-grated Parmesan you buy in a tube, it felt like it too, and even smelled a bit like it
The same (combo of) molecule(s) can also smell different to us depending on the concentration, possibly that's what happened in your kitchen with the lingering smell
I absolutely despise the smell of parmesan and cannot eat it at all. To me, it doesn't only smell like vomit/stinky feet but it actually tastes like vomit. I can detect parmesan in food from literally meters away even if only a tiny bit. And yes, that's how Italian restaurants smell to me.
When using parmesan I’ve literally had the thought “If i smelled this exact thing but out of a shoe or told it was a sock I‘d gag“ Lol this video has made me satisfied knowing someone else took that same thought seriously enough to run an experiment!
I really like those epidsodes about taste and smell, since I almost completely lack a sense of smell. It allows me to understand at least a tiny little bit, what a smelling nose can do
I bought some blue cheese for xmas the other day and I had to bag it in a ziplock bag as it stinked up the whole fridge with what I can only imagine is sweaty socks/shoes. :D "Can't wait to eat it!" We humans do be weird sometimes.
As an italian that eats parmigiano reggiano on a daily basis, I can confirm that that thing you call "parmesan" abroad has always smelled and tasted like vomit
When I was really young after I first saw one of the "Land before time" movies, I remembered a scene where one of them took some spores or something from a plant and called it "stinky" and used it as a seasoning I think, that night we had pasta and when my parents put that cheese on theirs I called to "Stinky" as well and ever since then me and my mom (and sometimes my dad) call it Stinky, we still enjoy it but just kinda funny
Since i was around 15 years old, i don't like parmesan as much as i did before, i can still enjoy it on pasta or in lasagna, but eating a piece of it (or other similar cheeses like grana padano) alone is quite yucky to me. I didn't really recognise it as the odour of vomit, but i'm also particularly bad at identifying smells in general. Thank you for making this video, it really helps knowing that i'm not just crazy
@@missnaomi613 I also cannot stomach the smell at all but I feel like the taste itself is actually fine. (Still end up hating it overall because the smell is so overpowering). My guess here is a lot of people have grown up eating parmesan and because of the things explained in the video their brain doesn't immediately register the smell as something bad. Meanwhile I've only had parm for the first time 5 years ago while my brain had already had many years of experiencing what vomit smells like, so when I first had parm I immediately made the connection, but if you start eating it at a younger age you might not make that connection. I also feel like the genetic component could matter a lot, we might just be the odd ones out here because we experience the vomit smell way worse than most other people do, just like some people have with cilantro.
I mentioned this fact to my gf and she felt incredibly vindicated. Apparently she was once on a flight and thought it smelled like something being served had a lot of parmesan, and it made her hungry. Someone else she was with said "No, someone threw up. How could you think that smelled good?"
A few weeks ago, I tried some pasta sauce that was supposed to be Vodka flavoured. Instead, it was *very* parmesany. It was *disgusting* while cooking, but tolerable afterwards. I put parmesan on my pasta normally; it's just that there was *so much* that I didn't interpret it as parmesan.
@@Zach476 No, it was a jarred pasta sauce that said it was vodka flavoured. I looked at the ingredients after I smelled it-that's how I know it was full of parmesan.
So I'm currently still studying chemistry. Two weeks ago I was in the lab working on an extraction of barley, when the lab was evacuated duo to another student dropping a vial filled with butyramide (this is the amide version of butyric acid and had the same smell properties). When we didn't yet know what was going on, everybody could smell the chemical and was in a heated discussion wether it was a puke smell or cheese smell. Eventually we were basically told we were all right and that only got us even more confused😂
Not relate to the main topic of the video, but since it's mentioned... I've been able to taste the soapyness of coriander(/cilantro) only once; from a plant I grew from seeds. I have had plants before and since, but those have been small plants from the supermarket that I replanted to larger pots (and given somewhat reasonable conditions, they're tough bastards, being almost easier to keep alive than kill in my experience), and I use dried coriander a lot (I prefer fresh, but the only good places I can find for the plant also make it nicely available for the cat, who likes to chew on it, something I'd like to avoid).
when you started the video with description of the experiment i could totally see it...err mentally smell it. 🙂 though sometimes i think i smell blueberries in a fart so...i'm not sure how reliable i am. [it's rare though...normally it's just a plain bad fart smell but it's a kinda pleasant surprise when it happens]
Things go even further. Years ago I saw a documentary on, well, poop. In it they talked about an experiment where people were shown some some pictures on a screen while being exposed to some scents to smell. The pictures would be of either flowers and prairies, mundane city scenes or pictures of dirty toilets and they had to rate the smells from nice to fowl and we'll, obviously the smells that were paired with pictures of toilets ranked the worst while the ones with prairies and flowers were ranked as nice. However, as you might have already figured out, all they ever smelled were different scents of feces. So apparently we can be tricked into thinking things smell good just by the context in which we smell them.
Is that why every now and then, the first dip of salsa sometimes tastes/smells like vomit to me? It goes away immediately, but my nose gets confused sometimes.
The first time I ever smelt a bag of shredded lettuce that had sat in the fridge for a tad bit longer than it probably should have, I asked myself why the heck did it smell familiar. Took me a week or two to realize that it smelled exactly like my favorite fruit in the world. Durian.
Weird thing, but I can understand this because of beanboozled jelly beans. One of them was vomit flavored and it was disgusting but I tried to figure out what flavors they had mixed or messed up to get that flavor. Trying to use the aftertaste to guess, I eventually settled on it tasting like some kind of pasta dish with cheese or a subway meatball sub...
What are the chemicals that cause the characteristic smells from a healthy dog paw and healthy dog ear? Are they the same as the two short-chain fatty-acids in this video? Or what about the smells of the binturong pee?
I've often found that different brands of parmesan smell like puke, particularly the stuff the cardboard tubes, yet the stuff they have at restaurants usually seems far less so.
If you think Parmesan smells strongly (and I mean real Parmesan from Italy), then try Olomoucké tvarůžky. Their smell is way stronger. Also Romadur cheese has a strong smell, somewhat similar to stinky feet, but less "acid" in the "tone" of the smell. It is not that "stingy" as smelly feet. I love all those cheeses.
My high school chemistry teacher had a bottle of butyric acid back in the store room. That stuff was pure vomit. "Butyric" is greek for "butter" iirc. (Edited to add) each spring my house gets these little ants that when crushed release this god awful minty poo smell (Tapinoma sessile, aka "odorous house ants" an incredibly interesting species). Then one day I read in the literature that the smell of T. sessile resembled "rotten coconut" or "blue cheese". Blue cheese in all its various forms is one of my favorites! But having read that, I got some very choice Roquefort and OMG it smelled exactly like those ants.
I only use freshly grated parm because I’ve always thought the pre grated smelled like barf. I still ate it because it tasted fine on something like a pizza. But I’d never buy it my self.
At a restaurant with 2 others. Had to wait at the bar for our seat. I was gagging, and had difficulty breathing. Eventually i asked when the staff going to clean up the mess. What mess? The vomit on the floor I said. Can’t you smell it? Turns out it was feta cheese dressing on a neighboring salad.
I haven't ever noticed "pukey" notes in Parmesan, but the thing that always gets me is how much it smells/tastes like pineapple. Supposedly it's due to the presence of methyl butyrate, which sounds like it's only a step away from butyric acid.
Me watching this whose diet is like 50% Parmesan cheese: ofc vomit smells like parmesan, thats what its made of!
Lol 😂
We are the same person.
Rennet is stomach content of baby cows that is used to ferment parm which is why parm smells like vomit because it's like 5% vomit to begin with.
Hahahahahah
Do you guys also eat cubes of parmigiano reggiano? Tis is de whey.
MinuteFood: Makes it pixelated to reduce the impact. Also MinuteFood at 4:25 : Makes it projectile to maximize the impact.
what can i say, i am a woman of contrasts
- arcadi
Perfectly balanced
I always thought Parmesan smelled like sick. But I figured that soft cheeses often smell foul too and yet were delicious when I ate them. It’s a funny thing.
I find it's taste repulsive so I had no problem explaining why it smelled like the vomit it 100% tasted like
How many people watched this, went to the kitchen, got the parrmesan cheese out of the fridge, and smelled it?
I would've if I had cheese
I am exercising maximum self control to not do that as I am watching the end roll...
Lol, I did exactly this. I closed my eyes to smell it, and it did remind me of vomit.
Smelled it... and then started eating it.
No but now I think I will
I like how the vomit dish is clearly inspired by the "dubious food" from Breath of the Wild lol
The Minuteearth team are big Zelda fans as I have noticed many times.
This is your reminder to get a metal master sword for Christmas. Its awesome and like 50$
@@mh6276 Like all the times they snuck in Purah stick figures? lol
Another huge smell similar to me is White Pepper seasoning REEKS like a Horse to me (but no one in my family agreed). I looked it up and found out the main chemical compound called "4-methylphenol" in white pepper is also found in high quantities in horse sweat! It was just nice to be right against my whole family who didn't believe me. 😂
I love the implication that there are insane companies still willing to sponsor this video but you had to turn them down 😆
My girlfriend likes to cook strawberries to make a sort of compote that she likes to have with yogurt or ice cream, and we both joke that it makes the kitchen smell exactly like weed, until you look at it. When you see the food, your perception of the smell snaps back to hot strawberries.
Sounds delicious, especially when high.
Too funny... my whole life I thought parmesan cheese was vomit! I would come home from work and my wife would be cooking, I had no idea what that horrific smell was, and my first thought was 'vomit!', oh no one of the kids was sick! And then I'd internally dry reach before I knew it was parmesan... and my brain tried to get me to believe it was all ok (but it was not - still stank like vomit...) Now I know!!
It reminded me of a discussion I had with my grandmother years ago. Garlic smells good in dishes (well, it does for us), but a person smelling like garlic is repulsive
This particular case may also be social though. Garlicky smell from a person generally doesn't indicate a disease (I believe it may, but it's way more likely that they just ate garlic for breakfast), and we could be ok with it if we weren't taught that thet it's a bad thing
One issue is that the smell od garlic, if it's being expressed (produced) by a person will have been slightly altered from the original
If you eat enough garlic to smell like garlic your body is dealing with the sulfur compounds by changing them, so the smell is different
If you handle garlic, but don't eat it, your hands will smell great, but if you eat enough to make your skin smell it will smell like rancid garlic since your body is breaking it down.
@ConstantChaos1 I think more about garlicky smell from the mouth, but I guess it's the same thing (I assume that you need to eat truly a lot of garlic for your skin to smell of it, but I believe the way your breath smells like garlic is the same, it's not just dirty teeth), so makes sense
The chemical in cilantro is an aldehyde, and is also what is in stink bugs. Another one I know from brewing/fermenting is that some yeasts produce diacetyl, especially at higher temperatures, and this can cause a rancid buttery flavor in your beer. But apparently if you have this in a beer you brew, the yeast can eventually metabolize it, so just let the beer age a while!
oh you're gonna love our cilantro video! ua-cam.com/video/RZtPynXsFas/v-deo.htmlsi=1cMYwH5JnWBJuTeO
- arcadi
I've always read about cilantro tasting like soap to some people online, but for me it was always stinkbugs. In fact, one time I had a sip of soda which grossed me out since it tasted like cilantro, and when I looked, a stinkbug had fallen in it! Not fun at all.
My nephew (he was 8 or 9 at the time) once found an Easter egg in the back yard, about a week *BEFORE* Easter. As if that was not bad enough, we didn't have a hunt in the back yard the Easter before.
That egg had been in the back yard at least 2 years.
Knowing what he would do I told him to put the egg onto the outside garbage can. And to be careful *NOT* to break it.
I was surprised when he came back and said, "I wish I had listened to you.
Hah well that’s one way to learn about what time does to food, might’ve put him off eating eggs for a while…at least that’s what happens if i eat / smell something that stayed in fridge for too long
What do you mean not break it? As in it's a real egg not a chocolate one?
@@velbythorngage a lot of families hard boil eggs then dye them. So that is a hard boiled egg out in the elements for 2 years
"the vomit-y notes in parm" was not a phrase I was ready to hear
This video was extremely validating to me. I never grew up eating parmesan so I've only had it for the first time around 5 years ago. And ever since then I've always hated it because it smelled so much like vomit to me, especially the pregrounded stuff. The taste itself is actually fine but the smell is overpowering enough that it ruins a plate of spaghetti when I throw parmesan on it. And people have always just looked at me like I'm crazy whenever I pointed out the vomit smell, but I might just be more genetically dispositioned for that then, just like the soap cilantro people. I do think I enjoy parmesan when it's melted, so I'm guessing the heat breaks down some of the acid. Either way I'll just stick to throwing gouda on my pasta instead for the forseeable future
This may be the worst ad for Parmesan ever.
More for the rest of us! 😅
Michael Pollan discussed how fermented foods are culturally specific. Stinky cheeses. Fish sauce. Strong, authentic kimchi. If you didn’t grow up with it, chances are you’ll think it’s gross.
It's not just parmesan, pretty much every cheese that isn't fresh contains butyrric acid, as can other things like beer or wine, where it is often considered a defect, except for some lambic beers
I drank a sour beer once that tasted so strong it felt like it was burning my tastebuds. Afaik a "farmhouse sour" is a beer seeded with naturally occurring bacteria that sour the brew
Doing these stinky experiments in your kitchen is a bold choice
Hindsight is 20/20...
There's a wholeass outdoors and she chose her kitchen
Fr, I saw her take out that bottle and immediately followed it with a verbal "oh no"
The bacteria in Parmigian cheese makes butyric acid from the cleaving of esters by releasing hydrogen chloride which frees it. The isovaleric acid is created from the fermentation itself, specifically from cassien protien.
Don't I know this. I work janitorial. I actually have a disdain for smells that I can't visualize it's origin. It doesn't mean that when trash smells good, that I'm okay with it. Especially when I know what's in there. I also have an aunt that dislikes the smell of cinnamon because she associates it with the smell of butt.
Hahaha...I always thought cinnamon smelled kind of like weird mouth smell. There's a funky part to it!
One of my old college buddies has always called Parm, stinky-feet cheese. I've never claimed my sense of smell was particularly keen but I've always thought that was mostly humorous exaggeration, but this video changed my mind. I still have no problem with the green container parm even after it's been sitting in the fridge for several months.
Decades ago, I played this video game called ty the tasmanian tiger 2. In it, there is a line when ty delivers lunch to some workers who then go on to complain about the smell and ty blames it on the Parmesan cheese. I NEVER understood why they put this into the game because parmesan has never stunk to me before. To the point that one day I went up to my mom's fridge to smell the Parmesan cheese to see what they were talking about, and still couldn't smell anything. Now I can see why they did. Thank you for clarifying this decades old mystery.
They made a sequel to that Ty The Tasmanian Tiger?? Impressive I thought it didn't do very well
Excellent video! That Ragusea vid is good too.
In Germany, we call smelly feet "Käsefüße" - cheese feet! So that connection through isovolaric acid makes a lot of sense to me!
As a Brit I can confirm the thing about Hershey's chocolate, I've eaten exactly one piece on my first trip to the US about 20 years ago and will never eat a second. The weird thing is, I will eat parmesan by the kilo and I didn't have that until I was an adult either.
It's social conditioning. You've probably eaten tons of parm before you ever got to try chocolate, and while you associate those funky tastes with cheese, you haven't been culturally prepared to associated them with chocolate.
It's true with lots of stuff, if you don't have the cultural familiarity with certain foods they can be inedible to you because their taste profile is something you associate with something different and that mixture between them is...offputting.
But it's very similar to most people needing to get used to softer, stinkier cheeses. They are gross and inedible to most people who didn't grow up with them until they push through that feeling and get used to it.
A ton of Americans literally can't detect it. I grew up near a chocolate company that made great chocolate and so I always found Hersheys to be kinda vile. But I had friends who genuinely didn't notice how much better the good chocolate was
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 Hersey’s is definitely low quality chocolate to me but, I know people who love it. like it’s never my first choice unless i’m making s’mores specifically but, I feel like that’s more due to marketing than a preference for taste.
@@Tinil0 I wish I had eaten tons of parmesan before I did, but as I said I sadly only had it as an adult, possibly even after the Hershey's. There may be some social conditioning, Americans are conditioned that it's perfectly fine if your chocolate bar tastes like vomit. Whereas in Europe we are taught that if chocolate tastes like that then there is something very, very wrong with it.
But I think it really comes more down to preparidness and familiarity... When I tried parmesan, I kinda knew what I was in for and expected it to be a lot less pleasant than it was. When I was offered a piece of Hershey's, I *thought* I knew what to expect. But nobody had told me of the terrible things Americans do to their poor chocolate... I actually thought it was a prank at first lol.
As a brit living in the USA I can confirm there is very good chocolate to be found here, but not by any large companies. Hershey's chocolate is absolute garbage. Disgusting.
This explains why i had to add a large amount of spices to my storebought pasta to make it somewhat edible.
I wasn't lying when i told them it smelled like vomit.
Chemistry in nature can be both surprisingly varied and surprisingly simple. The difference between rotten and fermented is pretty slim
Kimchi has entered the chat …
@DawnDavidson for real, kimchi sorta stinks but it's so damn tasty
@ You can have all of mine! EEEWWWWW! 🤢🤣
to be fair, this one's on us for letting milk go bad and then say "yeah imma eat that", we can't complain that we confuse it for vomit.
And if it's at a kids entertainment center - it's probably both vomit and cheese! 😂
"Oh no! My pizza and Pepsi!"
when i was a kid in like elementary school, they had pasta for lunch sometimes and the first time i put the cheap packet of parm on it i thought it tasted like vomit and idk why people liked it. nowadays im mostly fine with the cheap fake stuff on pasta so i guess i became a fan of it as a grew older
As a child, my little sister called grated parmesan "throwup cheese".
Working in a micro lab I have occasionally experienced what I call a “work smell” registering as a food smell and I usually take that as a cue it’s well past time for lunch lol
freshly autoclaved media sometimes smells like delicious beef broth.
i remember once i was enjoying a dinner with my family when i had to guiltily admit that i absolutely could not stomach the food. it tasted delicious, i clarified, but something inside it SMELLED like puke. i wasn't tasting it when i was eating it (so it was clearly a substance that didn't release the smell when chewed,) but i could smell it just enough that i felt put off from the entire dish. we identified that it was probably the blue cheese in the salad and i was gracefully excused from what would have otherwise been an abhorrent insult to their cooking lol.
I wonder if some people are genetically more predisposed to smelling vomit than other, like with cilantro
We had a perfume bottle explode in a bathroom. It was difficult to get rid of the smell at first, but once I reasoned that the odors in perfumes are typically alcohol extracts, I was able to eliminate them with some effort. My strategy for cleaning pungent smells, soap and water followed by isopropyl alcohol, and again with one last round of soap and water.
Story time: I had bought a fragrance (room) spray that was covered in white and orange colorations. I couldn't find the name of the smell but I assumed it was citrus of some nature.
When I got home and smelled it, I was disgusted by the smell and I had stowed it away for 2 years before I decided to throw it out. But before discarding it, I tried to determine the smell again. That is when I noticed "Coffee" written in smaller letters somewhere on the can.
Coffee!? I sprayed it again and smelled a coffee-like smell. This same coffee-like smell smelled good. Well, it smelled as expected, which was good. The expected citrus smell of two years ago, which it was not, was terrible and disgusting.
Same smell. Different expectations. Different levels of "pleasure"
withe the parmesean confusion thing, one time there was a fire in our back yeard and when i smelt it i thought it was barbeque and asked my dad if he was grilling and he was like "... no?" and then we went outside and looked at the back and there was a giant grassfire
Disgust is something that you generate in your mind (even if your body reacts physically, it is driven by you telling yourself that you are disgusted). It isn't difficult at all to convince yourself that something good is actually gross. It is a little more difficult to overcome your own bias to convince yourself that something gross is actually good, but it is certainly possible.
So theoretical I could raise a kid to enjoy eating poop?
Well this explains why I thought a recent exceptionally strong Parm/Garlic dish smelt horrible.
Also, we perceive smells different depending on whether we smell something 'normally' through our nostrils, and retronasaly, from the back of the throat. it's why Blue Cheese tastes different than it smells.
"... Hopefully, it's cheese." should be this channel's tag line. 😁
Was certainly not expecting a Cult of the Lamb reference in a MinuteFood video!
One time I was handed a bowl of Velveeta cheese flavored ice cream and was then asked to guess the flavor. It tasted like salted caramel and was kinda nice. As soon as I found out, it was really harf to eat. I thought if I kept eating it, I'd get used to it, and I kinda did, but every single time I remembered what it was, it just became nasty again
Something that might be fun to look into, but caution because of how long it might take to test, check out Stinky Tofu.
It is fermented Tofu, so it will smell like something died (which technically, something did), but it is delicious.
People who enjoy the taste come to enjoy the smell, whereas people who never smelt it before will recoil like you served them something from the landfill.
I would be interested in hearing more about the scientific part of it, where you break down what it is that produces that pungent smell, and where else that smell can be found, but also to see if you could/would come to enjoy the smell. Similar to the Parmesan smell getting confused, Stinky Tofu will usually have other spices mixed with the smell, so people who enjoy eating it will also pick up those notes and know the smell is Stinky Tofu and not roadkill.
It's always interesting to walk the Night Market in Taiwan and come across that section where they sell Stinky Tofu. There's a certain perimeter of smell where some people walk through, and others recoil. Even if they know it's just a food, if they don't like Stinky Tofu, they still avoid the smell. Kind of like the Cilantro/Soap taste thing.
What's the component that makes surströmming smell like danger?
Oh, surströmming is FULL of short chain fatty acids, including butyric acid, propionic acid, and acetic acid!
4:23
Yup, i thought it might be more of a association thing...
Like how you can train a dog to associate the sound of the bell to feeding time...
I love your content! Keep on!
I never had the heart to tell my mom the real reason why i don't want parmesan when we're having dinner. Thanks for reassuring me about the scientific accuracy when I now go bring up vomit while we're eating spaghetti
I used to work in a lab that used Benzaldehyde for whatever reason which has an almond-like smell and whenever I ate almond cookies during that time I was reminded of work.
Fun Fact. I was filing down calluses on my feet, and noticed the filings look like the pre-grated Parmesan you buy in a tube, it felt like it too, and even smelled a bit like it
The same (combo of) molecule(s) can also smell different to us depending on the concentration, possibly that's what happened in your kitchen with the lingering smell
I absolutely despise the smell of parmesan and cannot eat it at all. To me, it doesn't only smell like vomit/stinky feet but it actually tastes like vomit. I can detect parmesan in food from literally meters away even if only a tiny bit. And yes, that's how Italian restaurants smell to me.
When using parmesan I’ve literally had the thought “If i smelled this exact thing but out of a shoe or told it was a sock I‘d gag“ Lol this video has made me satisfied knowing someone else took that same thought seriously enough to run an experiment!
I really like those epidsodes about taste and smell, since I almost completely lack a sense of smell. It allows me to understand at least a tiny little bit, what a smelling nose can do
I bought some blue cheese for xmas the other day and I had to bag it in a ziplock bag as it stinked up the whole fridge with what I can only imagine is sweaty socks/shoes. :D
"Can't wait to eat it!"
We humans do be weird sometimes.
I've always found my toes to smell like parmesan. It was this weird feeling where I knew this was gross, but I liked the funky smell.
Mine too, you're far from alone
As an italian that eats parmigiano reggiano on a daily basis, I can confirm that that thing you call "parmesan" abroad has always smelled and tasted like vomit
what in the world is going on with the picture at 6:22
When I was really young after I first saw one of the "Land before time" movies, I remembered a scene where one of them took some spores or something from a plant and called it "stinky" and used it as a seasoning I think, that night we had pasta and when my parents put that cheese on theirs I called to "Stinky" as well and ever since then me and my mom (and sometimes my dad) call it Stinky, we still enjoy it but just kinda funny
Since i was around 15 years old, i don't like parmesan as much as i did before, i can still enjoy it on pasta or in lasagna, but eating a piece of it (or other similar cheeses like grana padano) alone is quite yucky to me. I didn't really recognise it as the odour of vomit, but i'm also particularly bad at identifying smells in general.
Thank you for making this video, it really helps knowing that i'm not just crazy
Glad to know that the Powdered can stuff smelling like vomit wasn’t just me hallucinating.
What did you do with all of the leftover butyric acid and isovaleric acid after you made this video?
well that explains why i don't like parmesan lol
Right?! How is it so popular?!
@@missnaomi613 I also cannot stomach the smell at all but I feel like the taste itself is actually fine. (Still end up hating it overall because the smell is so overpowering). My guess here is a lot of people have grown up eating parmesan and because of the things explained in the video their brain doesn't immediately register the smell as something bad. Meanwhile I've only had parm for the first time 5 years ago while my brain had already had many years of experiencing what vomit smells like, so when I first had parm I immediately made the connection, but if you start eating it at a younger age you might not make that connection. I also feel like the genetic component could matter a lot, we might just be the odd ones out here because we experience the vomit smell way worse than most other people do, just like some people have with cilantro.
I love butyric acid.
what a lovely video to watch while nauseous!
I mentioned this fact to my gf and she felt incredibly vindicated.
Apparently she was once on a flight and thought it smelled like something being served had a lot of parmesan, and it made her hungry. Someone else she was with said "No, someone threw up. How could you think that smelled good?"
I've always thought Parmesan had that weird vomit smell my whole life time and it took a while to get over the fact they have that similar oder
0:23 Dubious food!
Underrated comment
A few weeks ago, I tried some pasta sauce that was supposed to be Vodka flavoured. Instead, it was *very* parmesany. It was *disgusting* while cooking, but tolerable afterwards.
I put parmesan on my pasta normally; it's just that there was *so much* that I didn't interpret it as parmesan.
If it was Vodka sauce, that is basically a tomato sauce with cream and vodka mixed in it. Vodka sauce can have parm mixed in but it's not required.
@@Zach476 No, it was a jarred pasta sauce that said it was vodka flavoured. I looked at the ingredients after I smelled it-that's how I know it was full of parmesan.
I've ruined a few foods for myself by associating them with unpleasant things this way.
So I'm currently still studying chemistry. Two weeks ago I was in the lab working on an extraction of barley, when the lab was evacuated duo to another student dropping a vial filled with butyramide (this is the amide version of butyric acid and had the same smell properties). When we didn't yet know what was going on, everybody could smell the chemical and was in a heated discussion wether it was a puke smell or cheese smell. Eventually we were basically told we were all right and that only got us even more confused😂
Not relate to the main topic of the video, but since it's mentioned... I've been able to taste the soapyness of coriander(/cilantro) only once; from a plant I grew from seeds.
I have had plants before and since, but those have been small plants from the supermarket that I replanted to larger pots (and given somewhat reasonable conditions, they're tough bastards, being almost easier to keep alive than kill in my experience), and I use dried coriander a lot (I prefer fresh, but the only good places I can find for the plant also make it nicely available for the cat, who likes to chew on it, something I'd like to avoid).
I've noticed the frozen strawberries I buy from Costco smell profoundly like vomit as well.
My dog watched this video and lost all respect for humans
when you started the video with description of the experiment i could totally see it...err mentally smell it. 🙂
though sometimes i think i smell blueberries in a fart so...i'm not sure how reliable i am. [it's rare though...normally it's just a plain bad fart smell but it's a kinda pleasant surprise when it happens]
Things go even further. Years ago I saw a documentary on, well, poop. In it they talked about an experiment where people were shown some some pictures on a screen while being exposed to some scents to smell. The pictures would be of either flowers and prairies, mundane city scenes or pictures of dirty toilets and they had to rate the smells from nice to fowl and we'll, obviously the smells that were paired with pictures of toilets ranked the worst while the ones with prairies and flowers were ranked as nice. However, as you might have already figured out, all they ever smelled were different scents of feces. So apparently we can be tricked into thinking things smell good just by the context in which we smell them.
Adam Regusia mention!!! Yes!! My favourite food science/science adjacent UA-camrs!
My first encounter with parmesan as a child resulted in me actually vomiting.
I think it would be scarier to wake up and find a whole wedge of parmesan cheese laying next to you
to you
i would just have a midnight snack, i love free food
nom nom nom
- arcadi
Is that why every now and then, the first dip of salsa sometimes tastes/smells like vomit to me? It goes away immediately, but my nose gets confused sometimes.
The first time I ever smelt a bag of shredded lettuce that had sat in the fridge for a tad bit longer than it probably should have, I asked myself why the heck did it smell familiar. Took me a week or two to realize that it smelled exactly like my favorite fruit in the world.
Durian.
i always thought parmesan smelled horrible but i was willing to bear it cause it tasted great lol
7:07 Bill Cipher? Is that you??
Weird thing, but I can understand this because of beanboozled jelly beans. One of them was vomit flavored and it was disgusting but I tried to figure out what flavors they had mixed or messed up to get that flavor. Trying to use the aftertaste to guess, I eventually settled on it tasting like some kind of pasta dish with cheese or a subway meatball sub...
I hope this video I just saw, is completely erased from my memory until the next time I eat spaghetti with parmesan.
uhm, I can't wait for the next time I have some parmesan... I guess... ? great video
I'm so glad I almost never register butyric acid in food as butyric acid fresh from the tummy forge.
Definitely going to tell my friend I snuck into his house and replaced his parmesan with dried vomit. 😈
What are the chemicals that cause the characteristic smells from a healthy dog paw and healthy dog ear? Are they the same as the two short-chain fatty-acids in this video? Or what about the smells of the binturong pee?
My dad used to microwave fresh Parmesan to make Parmesan crisp ... Made the whole house reek for hours.
“Intesting”? 6:33
I spy the Goat! Someone on the animation team plays Cult of the Lamb!
Glad I waited until _after_ my spaghetti dinner to watch this. ;^)
I would need to see an actual experiment done on this.
there's actual experiments on this! as always, we leave all our scientific references in the description so you can read all about it
- arcadi
@@MinuteFoodthanks. I heard "Antidotal" and was rolling my eyeballs hard.
This must also be why the color of something effects its taste, since taste is mostly smell.
You really do eat with your eyes.
I've often found that different brands of parmesan smell like puke, particularly the stuff the cardboard tubes, yet the stuff they have at restaurants usually seems far less so.
If you think Parmesan smells strongly (and I mean real Parmesan from Italy), then try Olomoucké tvarůžky. Their smell is way stronger. Also Romadur cheese has a strong smell, somewhat similar to stinky feet, but less "acid" in the "tone" of the smell. It is not that "stingy" as smelly feet. I love all those cheeses.
Albeit aside. Your voice sounds very decorative.
My high school chemistry teacher had a bottle of butyric acid back in the store room. That stuff was pure vomit. "Butyric" is greek for "butter" iirc.
(Edited to add) each spring my house gets these little ants that when crushed release this god awful minty poo smell (Tapinoma sessile, aka "odorous house ants" an incredibly interesting species). Then one day I read in the literature that the smell of T. sessile resembled "rotten coconut" or "blue cheese". Blue cheese in all its various forms is one of my favorites! But having read that, I got some very choice Roquefort and OMG it smelled exactly like those ants.
I only use freshly grated parm because I’ve always thought the pre grated smelled like barf. I still ate it because it tasted fine on something like a pizza. But I’d never buy it my self.
At a restaurant with 2 others. Had to wait at the bar for our seat. I was gagging, and had difficulty breathing. Eventually i asked when the staff going to clean up the mess. What mess? The vomit on the floor I said. Can’t you smell it?
Turns out it was feta cheese dressing on a neighboring salad.
I haven't ever noticed "pukey" notes in Parmesan, but the thing that always gets me is how much it smells/tastes like pineapple. Supposedly it's due to the presence of methyl butyrate, which sounds like it's only a step away from butyric acid.