Yep, there is a world of foods out there that are known and referred to as the smelliest. Sulfuric, fishy, pungent and, for some, downright disgusting, the foods renowned for their stench come from a wide range of ingredients and food categories: cheeses, fish sauces, meat spreads, fruits, vegetables and chocolate. For some, the smells of these foods are tantalizing, while for others they are sickening and panic-inducing. How do we make sense of this? And why are certain ingredients chosen and considered delicious in so many regions around the world?
With ingredients as diverse as durians, natto, kimchi, pita and smelly tofu, to name a few, can we find a characteristic that makes them the quintessence of smelly foods, other than their strong odor? Olfaction is a fascinating topic and its intersection with food production and consumption is complex, drawing upon sensory science, neuroscience, the genetics of individual flavor perception, cultural semiotics, consumer studies and anthropology. Culinary smelly foods primarily rely on ingredients and cooking processes that have used fermentation and decomposition to develop smelly aromas and foodstuffs. Culturally, accepting and consuming smelly foods is about everyday experiences, social life, heritage and the appropriation of a part of a nation’s social and historical identity through its food. These are fundamental elements of food studies as much as smell culture, and we ask: how and why do different people find pleasure, or abhorrence, in smelly foods?
Defining Smelliest Foods
Though there is no single objective definition, “smelly food” or “a stinky food item” represents the overwhelming presence of detectable, strong food odors and an unmistakable discord extending across cultures in most cases. The smelliest foods are most commonly grouped according to the strong off-putting odors they release, eliciting responses of disapproval among those within sensory range. Surprisingly, descriptions of the world’s smelliest foods are as diverse as the foods themselves, manifesting most commonly as strong or musty odors with a basic, alkaline, or putrid sour smell and ranging from sweet to spicy. Foods possessing this distinct antimicrobial “aromatic” odor profile exist in two primary forms: food past its prime and food cooked using extreme methods. The most commonly sought-after smelliest foods are rotted, cured, fermented, and aged fruits and proteins. Generally, smelly foods can be found in many shapes in the traditional cuisines of countries near the sea and oceans.
Researchers consider the strong odorous character of smelly foods to be the result of both molecular structure and olfactory perception. The role of volatile compounds is significant in producing odors abundantly. Smelly foods include not only strongly odored ripe foods but also a distinct class of foods that ferment and ripen through unique methods. Cultural background and the way you look at your food are also important. Like the Mexican cheese, you smell directly instead of eating it. While some may be afraid of smelly food, others are wowed by its savory flavor. Sensation psychology suggests that “smelling” consists of cues from molecules, cognition, perception, and the integration of these factors. Thus, our previous cultural recognition and individual tolerance to dietetic food, including smelly food, have been combined in smell experience dissociated from the effect of odorants. The accumulation of individual recognition, cultural background, and regional dietetics has created regional smells. There are differences in locales regarding common smells and different types of smelliest food that exist from the local culture and the characteristics of local diets.
There are three general lines of thought about how these odorous impressions and their cultural interpretations have come to be. Identifying and rank-ordering adjectives in sensory words, either from a restricted list or from subjects’ own experiences, produces protocols that must reflect consensus. To investigate if some foods are inherently smelly or just culturally constructed to be such is difficult, but it would be instructive to sensory scientists working in the food industry, neuromarketing, and anthropology. Exploitation of the consensus in smelly food odors adds to our body of knowledge of food smell in the human diet.
Cultural Significance of Smelliest Foods
Foods with strong scents aren’t usually the first elegances that come to mind, but if we look through the filthy layers of smoke and greasy preparations, we can find – sustained by generations of aromavores – an insatiable hunger for the pongy. In terms of culinary and cultural merits, pungent food is considered by some as the harsh tonic for the sensory overload and ubiquity of boring, look-alike, taste-alike industrial food. Dyed-in-the-wool gastronomes and historians consider certain smelly and strongly flavored foods as similar to lifestyle choices. The roots of nearly all super-smelly foods are embedded in traditions and community practices, religion, medical histories, food processing and conservation techniques, national rituals, or regional and festive celebrations.
The flavors of these aromatic foods, resembling durians or pungent bouquet, can offer an all-enveloping chocolate and hazelnut taste with hints of vodka. But it’s unfair to reduce a complex symbol to its kitschy representation alone. Smelly (and taste-smelly) foods are often encoded with an exhaustive number of symbols that define our culinary globe. These symbols include childhood, the stewardship of kings, political struggles, conversations over city streets, souvenir categories, kitschy statues, family breakfast vegetables, unusual foods of foreign lands bought from slow-moving markets to supermarkets, overpriced sumptuous gifts, loving hands behind entire streets, the spoils of international romance, so atypical it stinks. Smelly food is also associated not only with geographic exchanges, but a series of different exchanges: between ingredients, culinary forms, shared activities, cooking styles, and culinary infrastructures that build interrelationships of various kinds.
Historical and Traditional Uses
For as long as people have been compiling lists of good and bad smells, the world’s smelly foods have featured high on the register of culprits. To name just a few: dill has been described as ‘an aromatic gastronomical misdemeanor’; stinky tofu has been berated by customers as being a ‘step toe fungus’ for peddling the stuff; and the release of Sauvignon Blanc with its distinctive ‘cat pee’ smell was thought by some to be a sign of suppliers duping customers. Shame that some were once described as willing to eat anything that is rotten; don’t they know others eat fermented goods?
In fact, apart from their entertainment value for food writers and television presenters, the world’s smelly foods are of a lot more interest. Firstly, the existence of a wide variety of very smelly foods suggests that smelliness is not an automatic social or biological disqualifier. Historical and traditional uses of bacon, kimchi, cheese, injera, dry meat, shingled bream, and taro help put today’s passion for all things stinky into context. Although some of the most talked-about smelly foods achieve their effect by going off, or by causing a surprise, in many cases a distinctive aroma – or downright horrible pungency – is the result of centuries of culinary art. Many of these foods are slow-cooked, air-dried, converted, or anaerobically fermented. Features for which smelly foods are bantered worldwide and across Europe, from Iceland to Greece, from Scandinavia to Portugal, may reflect a time when such products were quintessentially local, and were determined as much by the availability of resources as by culture. Moreover, although smelly foods have spread, globalization frequently favors a bland, tasteless proscription concerning the way most of the smelly foods must be made at present. This often results in inauthentic or overly industrial processes. And so, despite the difficulties faced by producers in a global system, the tastes of cultural peasantries can never be completely quashed, nor their distinctive smells wafted away.
Science of Smell
The science of smell is a complex one. The perception of a smell begins when airborne molecules waft out of, for example, a piece of pungent cheese and land on the smell receptors in your nose. Olfactory receptor cells are like no other cells in your body; when they’re damaged or destroyed, they can grow back. Smell signals from these cells are the only sensory signals that go directly into the brain. They send messages to the olfactory bulb at the front of your head from where they’re spread to other brain regions. Olfactory bulb neurons connect to the amygdala and to the hippocampus, the two brain areas that are involved in the processing of emotion and memory, respectively. Smell really seems to bind to your emotions and memories in an intimate way.
Many genes in human DNA code for only the olfactory receptors. It was found that humans might have 400 different types of olfactory receptors. There are around 40 million olfactory receptors in your nose, and they are responsible for your ability to distinguish between at least 1 trillion different odors. Moreover, people vary greatly in their ability to detect and identify smells. Some people do not detect the odor of asparagus metabolites in urine after eating asparagus. Other people experience phantom smells – they might detect an unpleasant smell that is not detectable by anyone else. Obviously, there are enormous individual differences in the sensitivity and preference of smell, and individual differences determine to a very large extent if someone likes a particular smelly food.
How Smells Affect Taste
It might be hard to think about the sense of smell without considering its close relationship with the sense of taste. This is mainly due to the fact that what we often describe as “taste” is actually a combination of taste and smell. Consider the last time you bit into a chocolate bar, tasted a cup of coffee, or scooped a spoonful of vanilla yogurt into your mouth. All of these foods have profound aromas that tickle the olfactory epithelium at the top of your nose. We are taught that each sense by itself is a distinct messenger of information. When it comes to smell, how we process the information is through far less centralized networks, especially after it reaches the brain. Recent research in the science of the senses has shown us that smell has a critical connection to our ability to process emotions as well. The common interpretation is that you might assume that we “don’t taste very much because the nerves running from the nose to the mouth are very small.”
However, aroma sensory studies have given us a slightly different picture. Researchers who are studying the sense of taste have been able to show results that illustrate how the brain synthesizes the information about chemicals or fragrant particles that it has received from two different nerves that run to it. One runs from the back of your nose and carries aromatic information called the olfactory bulb. The other comes from the taste receptors lining the inside of your mouth and throat. Scientists and researchers have established through experimental evidence that not only do we become physiologically unable to separate the information that the brain receives from these two pathways, but that the brain doesn’t want to because of the significant benefits it gains by blending odors and flavors. Smell and taste simply don’t function as separate senses. A strong aroma is a sign that a chemical compound we smell could provide important energy nutrition if eaten, as such a desirable aroma helps make the actual taste of food seem more sweet and less bitter, sour, or salty. This fact, in the ancient world, the stated role of the archeus was dual: both to perceive the direction of an aroma and to make the food harmonious with the body upon contact within the stomach. Smell in the brain is both a guide as well as a harmonizer, increasing the desirability of the foodstuffs through its effect upon taste. It’s for all of these reasons that the “smell” of a food seems to actually be tied to its flavor, how we experience foodstuffs when we are eating. This is also evident when the sense of taste is examined further in search of sensorium. Why do we make fine foods “smelly” if our response is to turn our heads in disgust? These “smelly foods” in many cultures bear further witness to how special and unique an encounter with a taste might be. The evidence suggests a case for expanded sensorium through smell and the biological adaptive response of putting our appetites near our vomit is compelling. The enduring appeal of “fear eating” is no less a harder case to make. Why fill a longhouse with a six-month-old putrefying shark other than to destroy one another or to show how truly strong the Norse settlers of Iceland were, due to the stench and gutting to eat raw because of the fermented microflora? While the stink of food can attract us because it piques our sensorium, it can also repel us because it tells us, through our longings, how potentially dangerous encounters with food might be. This does not mean that a taste for terrible encounters with amoral foodstuffs is absent from the social calendars of many cultures.
Culinary Experiences with Smelly Foods
In the culinary field, there are two culinary experiences with smelly foods that are celebrated: the challenge to try them and the love for them. Chefs and culinary artists highlight these ingredients in their creations as a homage to their culture, as a trend to be followed, or even as a joke in the form of a daring dish that surprises and revolts at the same time. Those who love them defend their rich flavor and the sophistication of their preparation. Smelly cheese, for example, is an excellent ingredient and is part of a diverse range of delicious dishes. Epoisses, a French soft cheese lavishly washed in brandy and pungent from the bacterium Brevibacterium linens, creates an unforgettable sauce to spoon over a grilled steak. When performed for diners, this dish is typically done at the table, combining shock value and a touch of humor. When served, it is accompanied by a sprig of fresh mistletoe to encourage closeness. Whether providing a rewarding culinary experience or simply a laugh, the marriage of smelly cheese and a sprig of mistletoe is perhaps the “nose-best” pair for undaunted diners. Because cheese is fat soluble, these processes enrich the cheese with many flavors, changing the texture and aromas to add levels of sensory experience. This cheese simply cannot be washed at home. Even curating a permitted list of ingredients requires skill, but buying them ready and preparing the dish is a challenge to be experienced. It is also possible to play with ingredient contrasts and accentuate their smelly fragrances to create foods that are complex, rich, and opulent in both flavor and nutrients.
Cooking Techniques and Recipes
As we may know, older cultures and cooking techniques usually use a relatively long time for marination, seasoning, or fermentation, and offer strong and distinct flavors in the dishes. For example, Tempoyak, an Indonesian durian fermentation, is used in the full-blown stage of durian. It is also fermented for days. While Gebank Madu offers a sweet and sour flavor with a strong garlic odor that is diminished and transformed by fermentation. Our recipes are written to be illustrative, especially from the perspective of philosophy and cuisine, not as replacements for open-ended solutions to culinary creativity.
Tips for Balancing Odors
One culinary blog suggests maximizing flavor through these two recipes. In pasta, the garlic works well because the dish isn’t entirely dependent on overpowering flavors. The garlic in the goat dish is a little less effective. It gets browned and soft, working its way between the fibers in the meat. But when you balance it against the other flavors in the chicken, the smells will work, and everything else bad cooks will pound into your food will create richer tones, making the game taste better. A reader proposes tips for cooking with smelly foods. A smart tip from recipe writing experience: if the item’s primary flavor is difficult, it is best to ensure the rest of the dish’s flavor is up to snuff in order to maintain the right taste.
The aforementioned foods, crossing over with the commonly ‘disgust eliciting’ experience of unpleasant smells, encompass cultures across the globe and crave appreciation. No one else will examine passionately without being disgusted by an unidentifiable odor; some people will be inclined to switch trains or public transportation cars. They are both the same curiosity in action. In conclusion, a shift to progress is presented through the five sections of the paper. Moving from the cultural and historical significance section, the reader has come to a better understanding of the context surrounding these highly odorous foods. The science of smell has been explored, resulting in a better comprehension of the confusing and complicated mechanisms of odor perception. Dealing with smelly foods involves their culinary dimension. As trends move toward pairing down the culinary landscape to the most authentic and natural experiences, it cannot be ignored that many such foods are of this ‘smelly’ kind, one way or another. So, we think tomorrow’s kitchen will feature many of these stinkers, especially considering the trend in sustainability and nose-to-tail cooking continuing to grow. Global cuisines are sure to morph and amalgamate even more in the future, so the current resistance to potentially pleasurable pungency is as much a lack of cultural exposure as it is about biology or genetics. All they need is a chance to be tasted! Would the real gourmand reader please stand up?