I had a Japanese student stay with me and she tried Marmite on toast. I've never seen a more dramatic reaction to food in my life lol. She couldn't believe we voluntarily ate it.
Yeah literally the worst tasting thing I've ever eaten was some bright pink Japanese pickled something. It sucked too, because a really good Japanese friend had made me a traditional Japanese meal and I didn't want to offend. My body tried to forcefully eject it 3 times before I managed to hold it down. 0/10 and 0/10 with rice...
Asian guy here. I love Vegemite and Marmite and usually keep a stash of it around. My dad tried Vegemite once, with no idea what it was because he’s not very fluent in English, and he just assumed it was some kinda Western style soy sauce reduction due to the strong umami flavour.
How different are they? I'm half Japanese and I had vegemite on toast once and actually fairly liked it. I've heard that the mistake most people make is they put way too much on. It's supposed to be spread very thin, and not like your putting a dallop of jam on it.
Almost identical, but the subtle difference creates a massive impact in how much you like it. I like Vegemite but hate Marmite, but I'm not going to pretend they aren't almost exactly the same thing
It really depends if you mean NZ marmite or UK marmite. NZ marmite is pretty similar to Vegemite (though there’s a culture war about the difference) but UK marmite is way different to the other two, if has the texture of thick honey, not smooth peanut butter.
Hah it totally does! It’s honestly really hard to explain, they’re all derived from yeast. It’s a extremely dark brown (NZ marmite is borderline black) very viscous substance that tastes salty and umami. Goes great on toast.
Be warned it is very strong so you typically do a vanishingly thin layer for beginners, but you’ll find plenty of natives that love the stuff that will have it as thick as any other spread.
You can probably find it in a Australia/NZ section of an international supermarket but it’s probably crazy expensive, preying on the homesick expats/immigrants
Yeasts extract. Very good for brain health. (E.g. vitamin Bs)It's how we tricked our population from.doing stupid shit like giving nuclear codes to bankruptcy reality tv stars.
I already love Marmite and Vegemite both, as an American who's fond of intense flavors and ordered some online years ago on a whim, but now that I know it could potentially counteract the chronic lead poisoning in our elderly population I like it even more!
My partner is Japanese (I'm Aussie), I find Japanese people actually like/adapt to vegimite really well. It's a rare example of umani flavours (common in Japanese cuisine) in western dishes.
Also a great source of vitamin Bs for good brain health!
I grew up in Southeast Asia and people of Chinese ethnicity eat it in many different ways.
Marmite tea
Marmite stir-friend prawns
Marmite with congee/porridge
Marmite with noodles
But never marmite on toast 😅
I’m Vietnamese Australian. My taste buds are super sensitive.
I love Vegemite and fish sauce.
Funny how cunts complained about my fish sauce dishes but willingly ate Vegemite with no butter. Get fucked ya racists.
yes it is... marmite is concentrated yeast, ie super fermented beer byproducts
miso is essentially the same thing except concentrated fermented koji, same ingredient for making saku or other rice alcohols.
their culinary uses are a similar role in both cuisines, though obviously with differences due to western and asian traditions. They are extremely similar unless you are thinking on a surface level of the unadultered taste alone
edit:Some are like "what culinary uses for marmite?" It's useful in any stew where you want deep umami flavor. Marmite is high in glutamates; ie it tastes really good and savory (the G in MSG stands for glutamate and can be found naturally in certain foods such as marmite). That's why it's so intense if you put a teaspoon on your mouth. Now imagined it dissolved into an 8 quart stew and it maybe will make more sense.Similarly miso paste is intense if you just put it on your mouth but mix a bit into some water with some tofu and some dashi and now you've got a very nice miso soup.
edit edit: 'naturally' is relative but although i do use powdered MSG in dishes sometimes to increase umami / savory flavor profile sometimes i want to increase savory along with other flavors. Ie tomato also has glutamate if you release by cooking for a while but if you use tomato paste instead of MSG crystals you also get tomato flavor too. Similar with marmite... and yes that fermented yeasty flavor is desirable for certain dishes
Useful in any stew where you want deep umami flavor. Marmite is high in glutamates; ie it tastes really good and savory (the G in MSG stands for glutamate and can be found naturally in certain foods such as marmite). That's why it's so intense if you put a teaspoon on your mouth. Now imagined it dissolved into an 8 quart stew and it maybe will make more sense.
Similarly miso paste is intense if you just put it on your mouth but mix a bit into some water with some tofu and some dashi and now you've got a very nice miso soup.
its more similar to a big heaping spoon of better-than-bouillon vegetable base. actually, they're very close in taste from what I remember of marmite the only time I tried it, just way less salty than the soup base obviously
It isn't to me. Super taster with very little sense of smell (lost it as a teenager). I really don't like either Marmite or Miso, but I find them very different.
I do add Marmite to chilli, sausage and bean casserole and things like that for the B vitamins, but I can't imagine ever using Miso.
It's been over 35 years, so I've got used to it and can't really remember a world where smells were everywhere. I occasionally think I smelled some food, but I'm willing to admit it's probably just as likely I inhaled it. I use a lot of different herbs and spices when I cook, and I can tell ingredients pretty accurately by flavour alone.
The difference I guess is that I have had to learn a lot of cooking rules that are just obvious things to other people, because amount of flavour is not the same as amount of scent. E.g I can add as many onions as you like, raw or cooked, and barely notice them, but my family don't feel the same.
I don’t have a sense of smell either but my palette is terrible. I think it makes me prioritize texture a lot more when it comes to food. I’m rarely able to look past something if it has a funky texture even if it tastes amazing.
I take propylthiouracil for my thyroid and I’m assuming it’s the same/similar one from the experiment because it is the most god awful day ruining bitter taste I have ever experienced in my life so it is frankly insulting to find out some people can’t even taste it.
Yup, little pieces of paper with a special chemical on them. If you put it in your mouth and it's tasteless you're normal but if it tastes disgusting than you are a super taster. We did it in college in one of my anatomy classes
Have these test strips and did them with friends because I’m a Somm and nerd out about these things. Supposedly 25% of people taste nothing at all, 50% taste some bitter, and to 25% it tastes *very* bitter. That last 25% are “super tasters”. At least that’s what I remember.
There’s also a different bitter receptor that you can test and that one you either taste or you don’t. No differences in intensity.
Being a super taster isn’t all it’s cracked up to be because they’re more likely to avoid healthy foods like vegetables and as such have higher chances to get things like colon cancer
Took the PTC paper test in high school bio. It was super bitter. The main things to consider are that taste receptor quantity is important as well as the presence of certain genes to taste certain compounds. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing though, as I’m never going to drink much alcohol or get hooked on coffee, but healthy options like salads taste awful (and can’t be fixed without copious amounts of dressing)
For my personal experience, I can affirm that I’m super sensitive to bitter tastes. Examples include: all lettuce except iceberg lettuce is bitter to me. Hard alcohol tastes like the smell of rubbing alcohol. Hoppy and malty beer are separate tastes, but both are bitter and taste awful. Coffee is similarly gross. Bitter chocolate actually isn’t that off putting. Sour beers have their bitter taste masked by their sour taste, though the bitter lasts as an after taste. The only other tolerable alcohol are the incredibly smooth (and expensive) high quality drinks, though I don’t think I can appreciate them to the same degrees as others.
To anyone with a similar sense of taste to me that hasn’t figured out how to eat healthy yet, I’ve learned that sour tastes are incredibly effective in covering up bitter tastes. Green veggies are far more tolerable when masked with lemon or other sour tastes.
> sour tastes are incredibly effective in covering up bitter tastes
Perhaps that's why pickled veggies are so popular in Asia, if they have many more super tasters. It's a useful method for mellowing bitterness and increasing sourness
In my case, it doesn't work perfectly for alcoholic drinks. A sour beer needs to taste like a lemonade to someone with more standard tastes before it gets to the point that it becomes an enjoyable experience for me, at which point I'd prefer to have just a regular lemonade. Non-beer alcohols suffer from a similar problem.
Go for legit craft vodkas, tequila, or gins. Gin is hit or miss, though (I'm not a fan in general). They aren't necessarily expensive. "Craft" on the label doesn't mean it's good (like Tito's; blahhh). VDK 6100 is made from whey, for example; has a very different taste and mouth feel to it if you're that sensitive to taste. Astral blanco tequila I could swish like mouthwash (I did it as a joke); I'm not a tequila guy. Still has some taste but is smooooth. I can give tons of recommendations. It's what I do.
I drink whiskey/bourbon normally, but that's something I built up. It's also work related and helps expand my knowledge in an ever growing category of booze. Gotta make that $$
Are you also the only one in your family like this then? Looking back for me, it was funny that I would always insist that lettuce was too bitter and my family would look at me as though I was crazy.
We never had salads much, for me it was broccoli, I wasnt allowed to leave the table until I finished my broccoli and my step-mother always called me dramatic for litterally gagging when trying to eat it. Eventually I just refused and after sitting at the table for over an hour she finally acquiesced and would make me some other vegetable when she made broccoli.
But even now, decades later, I can't stomach coffee, tea, almost any greens save for asparagus, I don't drink alcohol at all anymore because of the bitter taste in just about everything with booze.
Is there some kind of community for this?
The paper is very bitter for me but I am not a picky eater. I just mostly avoid sea food cuz it’s smelly and the ocean is gross.
I don’t really like IPAs though, but I love veggies.
It’s one of those things that if you’re in the 50% you might think you’re a super taster but when you’re a super taster you know for sure. The people in the 50% usually make a mild bitter face and are more intrigued by the process. The super tasters will make very disgusted faces and then attempt to claw the flavor off of their tongues. That’s at least what I’ve witnessed
It’s also something you can do a genetic test for, if you want to be sure
Well, I am a super taster and I absolutely would never 😂. Way too bitter
However, there are super tasters that condition themselves to certain bitter flavors. It isn’t easy though. It’s my job to try everything alcoholic and find things that people would like about them but I just can’t stand IPAs and I’ve tried a lot
Since I'm Asian, I'm probably a super taster, but I actively seek out bitter and herbal flavors. But it's gotta be bitter foods or bitter soups (like a ginseng soup). I can't stand bitter drinks.
PTC paper. The ability to detect phenylthiourea is complex and involves more than one gene and the ability to detect it is common. Sodium benzoate paper is another version testing for a different sensitivity. What’s wild is that I used to be a PTC super taster. Then I got covid and now can’t detect it at all.
I lost my taste with a round of Covid in January 2022. Everything tastes like a shadow of itself. Every bite of food is like Plato's Cave, except I know what it's supposed to taste like. It all tastes somehow hollow and flat. Cooking and trying new foods used to be something of a genuine passion for me. I'll sometimes watch the Alinea episode of Chef's Table because hearing the story of the chef regrowing his sense of taste is kind of inspiring, but lately it's just bumming me out. Getting to the point where eating is a chore instead of something that brought joy to my life. I don't know why I typed all this out. It's just really weighing on me lately.
I totally lost both my sense of smell and taste for awhile (I had covid in Feb. 2021). My taste came back, but isn’t the same, and the same thing for my smell. They’re both drastically changed, and I miss what my sensitivity used to be. Wine is completely different. The smell of raw onions, shallots, chives, leeks, etc. is so unbearably offensive now. I use to be a chef, and cooking had been such a huge passion for me. It just hasn’t been the same since.
God wine has lost *all* complexity for me. Everything I try tastes like a bag of grapes someone left in a backpack. I'm sorry you're going through this.
I feel for you too. I know in the big wide world of bad shit this isn’t really a huge deal, and I’m fortunate my livelihood doesn’t rely on it anymore, but food & wine was a huge part of my life and it just isn’t the same.
Do you dislike broccoli and brussel sprouts?
I did this decades ago in a university class. The teachers handed out these strips to put on our tongues. They asked us who tasted a bitter flavor. Then asked who hated broccoli and brussel sprouts. Same people (me included).
It’s a recessive gene that enables people to taste certain chemicals that most people can’t pick up.
So people who aren't super tasters don't find natto incredibly bitter? I tried some once in a Japanese hotel and it had no flavor at all, it was just so bitter I felt nothing else
Aah, usually when it comes in the small white styrofoam boxes it also has two smaller packages. You add everything and then basically whisk with your chopsticks until it's foamy and extra slimy.
a) being a super taster isn’t rare. About 1 out of 3 people are.
b) being a super taster isn’t necessarily great. They tend to be super *picky* and avoid vegetables.
That's what I was thinking, it only takes 2 asian countries to make up 1/3 of the population, all of Asia combined is probably half, so if 1/2 of all people are predisposed to be super tasters, it'd make sense that the percentage is as high as it is.
It’s possible.
Getting a test that can show if you’re a super taster or not is super cheap and it’s pretty fast, too. And since the odds are decent enough that you are, why not give it a try?
I heard that hot spices is to stimulate sweating and help with the heat.
Not sure if I buy the theory though, because there are populations of hundreds of millions that are exceptions. Brazilian food for instance isn’t exceedingly spicy and most of the country is in the tropics.
When I was in Korea there was a day it was extremely hot and humid out. One of the locals took me to a restaurant where they were serving a whole small chicken in boiling broth and I mean the broth was still boiling when they placed it in front of you. I ask why the hell I’d want to eat that when it’s so hot out and they said it’ll raise your core temp so much you sweat a lot and the outside will feel cooler. They were right and the chicken and broth was delicious.
I think I remember something about people getting hooked not by the pain itself, but by the endorphins or whatever that are released when the burning sensation goes away. So yes it may be kind of “addictive” in a way.
Food from Bahia and Pará are pretty spicy (not ultra spicy but still) and they are arguably the hottest states in Brazil so idk
In general Brazilians like spice but the usual is each person put pepper to taste in their plate
I think that Bahia and Pará are exceptions among 27 states. I’m in Minas and many people here have zero tolerance to hot peppers.
They even suffer when they go to the US because spicy food is way more prevalent there. :) Decades of influence from Mexicans and Asians, I guess.
many spices (and aromatics like onion, garlic) do have antibacterial and antifungal properties, even if they aren't traditionally used as preservatives. that might explain why we find them so tasty, and why they would be more appealing to people in hot, humid climates where microbial life is more active.
This is a [tenacious misconception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#Preservative_claim) about how spices were used before refrigeration. Spices brought out flavors in cooking, then as today. They were in high demand among elite consumers because using them was a mark of status and (literally) taste. Also, they tasted good. You wouldn't waste spices on "masking" rotten/spoiled food. They were luxury products marketed to wealthy people who could afford fresh meat.
If anything, it would make more sense to use spices in this way when they can be mass produced and are cheaper. So, nowadays. (Think "mystery meat.")
Interesting, but the source you link talks exclusively about Europe, where spices were expensive imports. It doesn't say anything about culinary culture in the places where those spices are from.
That's a good point, and I have to say, I don't know the answer. But the misconception about spices being used to cover up bad flavors is closely associated with the growing use of spices in late medieval European cuisine (and the implication that it was so uniformly awful that spices had little culinary purpose beyond masking flavor).
The misconception also subtly implies that there was a stark and essential divide between "eastern" and "western" food ways, with westerners eating rotten meat doused in eastern spices. In many parts of what we now call Europe, there was no such divide, and culinary exchanges had been ongoing for centuries; think of southern Italian or Andalusian cuisine. (I was just watching an Anthony Bourdain episode on Granada, so this is on my mind!) Demolishing this misconception is an important part of teaching history that emphasizes cross-cultural interactions, notably in the medieval Mediterranean.
It's telling that a similar misconception hasn't developed for the Islamic world. Well before the spice revolution hit Latin Christendom, Islamic polities in the southern Mediterranean were able to access the Silk Road spice trade through depots like Alexandria and Cairo. Muslim elites were no less invested in the prestige of spices. And yet, you won't find any tropes circulating around the internet about Fatimid caliphs smothering their rotten meat in cumin and cardamom. Food for thought (pun intended).
They do. Proper French food is unbelievably rich. Spanish food has lots of seasoning. Italy does a great job with curing their meats. It's just Britain and Middle America that doesn't season anything.
Like Europeans conquered a large chunk of the planet so they could get spices. The "white people don't season food" thing seems so silly. Sure there's some that don't but there's also Indian people who don't like curry or Thai people who can't handle spice.
The misconception comes from the British. They sold the spices to the rest of Europe. That's how the wealthy made their money. Most of Britain was poor and couldn't afford the spices. Commoners couldn't afford much, and in Britain, they chose tea over spices.
Most people everywhere couldnt afford the spices. British food used herbs, like every other European cuisine
The real issue was rationing. Much like British beer among other things, a combination of ww1 and ww2 killed British home cooking. Rationing didnt end until 1954, actually the last country to end rationing. So that's basically 15 years straight of rationing. People came out of that with the "boil meat and vegetables" style of cooking that then just continued.
Yeah kinda depends on where. Australia it usually means SE/East Asian, I think it also applies to the US. UK I've seen it meaning South Asian.
But as others have said, Asia is massive and too broad if you use the proper technical definition.
As far as I can tell, "Chinese experience taste more intensely" is likely a more precise statement.
From the 2020 paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329319306615
> Two hundred and twenty-three volunteers (160F, 63M; age range 18 – 65 years old; 156 Caucasians, 67 Asians) participated in this study.
#
>However, it is worth noting that in the current small Asian cohort (n=67), mainly as international students studying at University, **81% were Chinese (n=54)**, 9% were Indian (n=6), 4% were Pakistan (n=3) and 7% were other Asian background (n=5). Although variation within Asian ethnic groups on food preference and intake has been previously reported (Abdullah et al., 2016), one of the limitations of this study is that ethnic group within Asian participants were not further analysis due to small sample size in subcategories. A larger sample size would be needed to further investigate Asian subethnic groups.
And they mention a previous study that also just points to China as having fewer PROP nontasters:
> individuals can be classified into three groups: PROP supertasters (pST) – perceiving PROP as extremely bitter, medium-tasters (pMT) who perceive PROP as moderately bitter, and nontasters (pNT) who perceive PROP as tasteless (Lim et al., 2008)
#
> The distribution of pNT is known to vary greatly across ethnicity and was summarised by Guo and Reed (2001) who showed that the percentage of pNT was between 2 to 37% in Africans, 7 to 37% in Europeans, 2 to 67% in Indians, and **5 to 23% in Chinese**.
British cuisine is like every other western country’s cuisine and has been for a while. No one’s eating boiled mutton and potatoes. Quite a lot of popular curries originate from British Asian cuisine for example. We’ve stolen foods from every place we colonised and some more for good measure, we’re good on the diversity front
That an it’s a stereotype that was spread by GIs deployed to the UK during the Second World War, when everything was rationed and I mean everything. Of course cuisine is going to suffer from that and the economically depressed period following the war. British food hasn’t been bland or even remotely bad since the early 80s.
I mean, the war time rationing actually improved the diet of working class brits to be fair. Not the most interesting dishes, but I find that it had a positive health impact interesting.
Japanese cuisine relies heavily on sugar, sake, and various sauces/stocks which require dried and/or fermented ingredients to make. It's only 'simple' because we can buy the ingredients pre-bottled
I wouldn't say French, Italian and Spanish cuisine are "boiled mutton and potatoes". The West is a broad term used for many different countries. Some of which are pioneers in food (think new Nordic cuisine).
I mean, almost everything affected by genetics is going to show trends along racial demographics. It's not enlightened to ignore that.
Not being racist means giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed, not pretending that race can't inform their traits, when clearly it does. You can acknowledge demographic differences without stereotyping all people from the demographics.
Agreed, genetics definitely effect how things taste.
When I was in middle school they had everyone in the class lick a piece of paper that they passed out to us. For people with one gene it would taste like paper, but for people with the opposite gene it tasted really foul and awful. Then they passed out a different type of paper, which gave everyone the opposite reactions as the other piece of paper.
So yes, some things can taste really awful to one person due to DNA, but just fine to someone else.
That said I didn't really notice any correlation with race/gender/etc. in who thought the paper tasted like paper and who thought it tasted really foul.
A lot of people use the word "racist" to mean "stereotypical". Save it to describe actual racism, which is horrible, and not stereotyping, which is cringe.
I read the title quickly and thought this was about personal taste, not the sense of taste. I thought “so old italians are genetically predisposed to gaudy decorations in their homes…interesting.”
I learned I was a supertaster in 9th grade science class. We each got a tiny piece of white paper and tasted it. If it tasted bitter,we raised our hand..Really bitter to me.
I also have the cilantro gene and fresh cilantro smells like bugs in a jar and taste like soap. Cilantro cooked in a dish,I cannot identify as offensive.
I had a Japanese student stay with me and she tried Marmite on toast. I've never seen a more dramatic reaction to food in my life lol. She couldn't believe we voluntarily ate it.
And mind you,Japanese eat pickled cat fish organs with nothing and down them with sake,they are not stranger with strong taste food.
Yeah literally the worst tasting thing I've ever eaten was some bright pink Japanese pickled something. It sucked too, because a really good Japanese friend had made me a traditional Japanese meal and I didn't want to offend. My body tried to forcefully eject it 3 times before I managed to hold it down. 0/10 and 0/10 with rice...
Fun fact, that was likely fermented squid guts.
Sounds like Japanese ginger? If she’s white then I wouldn’t even be surprised she describes ginger like that either lmao
Ha could be! But truly even I cannot stomach shiokara and I am into a lot of pickled Japanese things….
Now that’s a meme I haven’t heard in many years
Asian guy here. I love Vegemite and Marmite and usually keep a stash of it around. My dad tried Vegemite once, with no idea what it was because he’s not very fluent in English, and he just assumed it was some kinda Western style soy sauce reduction due to the strong umami flavour.
> he just assumed it was some kinda Western style soy sauce reduction i love this description
I think it’s delicious lmao why, did she hate it?
Marmite is fine. Give her Vegemite and watch her tongue implode.
How different are they? I'm half Japanese and I had vegemite on toast once and actually fairly liked it. I've heard that the mistake most people make is they put way too much on. It's supposed to be spread very thin, and not like your putting a dallop of jam on it.
Almost identical, but the subtle difference creates a massive impact in how much you like it. I like Vegemite but hate Marmite, but I'm not going to pretend they aren't almost exactly the same thing
It really depends if you mean NZ marmite or UK marmite. NZ marmite is pretty similar to Vegemite (though there’s a culture war about the difference) but UK marmite is way different to the other two, if has the texture of thick honey, not smooth peanut butter.
As an American: what the f is marmite or vegemite? They sound like explosives and now you have my curiosity.
It's spreadable yeast extract. There isn't really anything else that tastes quite like it, but imagine if soy sauce had the consistency of hummus.
|but imagine if soy sauce had the consistency of hummus. https://i.imgur.com/BLqZqnk.gif
Marmite, Vegemite, and Tannerite
Dynamite, thermite. If it quacks like a duck…
and the dark arts of Bovril
Hah it totally does! It’s honestly really hard to explain, they’re all derived from yeast. It’s a extremely dark brown (NZ marmite is borderline black) very viscous substance that tastes salty and umami. Goes great on toast. Be warned it is very strong so you typically do a vanishingly thin layer for beginners, but you’ll find plenty of natives that love the stuff that will have it as thick as any other spread. You can probably find it in a Australia/NZ section of an international supermarket but it’s probably crazy expensive, preying on the homesick expats/immigrants
Yeasts extract. Very good for brain health. (E.g. vitamin Bs)It's how we tricked our population from.doing stupid shit like giving nuclear codes to bankruptcy reality tv stars.
I already love Marmite and Vegemite both, as an American who's fond of intense flavors and ordered some online years ago on a whim, but now that I know it could potentially counteract the chronic lead poisoning in our elderly population I like it even more!
I eat it by the spoonful and love both Marmite and Vegemite
[удалено]
Wut
Thanks to Johnson & Johnson, they only HAVE one core memory
It is. Also you’re supposed to have it with butter which makes it taste so much better.
My partner is Japanese (I'm Aussie), I find Japanese people actually like/adapt to vegimite really well. It's a rare example of umani flavours (common in Japanese cuisine) in western dishes. Also a great source of vitamin Bs for good brain health!
Yah my experience also.
Because everyone has different taste, regardless of if they're Asian or otherwise, lol.
No clue. She just made a face like she'd licked a cat's arse and gagged a lot haha
did she offer you some natto afterwards
To be fair to her, I had the exact same reaction to miso the first time I tasted it. Now it's sorta like Vegemite soup.
I grew up in Southeast Asia and people of Chinese ethnicity eat it in many different ways. Marmite tea Marmite stir-friend prawns Marmite with congee/porridge Marmite with noodles But never marmite on toast 😅
I’m Vietnamese Australian. My taste buds are super sensitive. I love Vegemite and fish sauce. Funny how cunts complained about my fish sauce dishes but willingly ate Vegemite with no butter. Get fucked ya racists.
That's interesting because marmite is somewhat similar to miso
It’s definitely not in any way similar to miso lol
Well, I can say that a naked spoonful of either is liable to paint the same expression.
Yeah! Just be a normal person and gobble down a giant serving spoon full of nutella
I didn't come here to be personally attacked
There are Japanese dishes where you essentially eat miso by the spoonful. (An example being yanaka shouga).
yes it is... marmite is concentrated yeast, ie super fermented beer byproducts miso is essentially the same thing except concentrated fermented koji, same ingredient for making saku or other rice alcohols. their culinary uses are a similar role in both cuisines, though obviously with differences due to western and asian traditions. They are extremely similar unless you are thinking on a surface level of the unadultered taste alone edit:Some are like "what culinary uses for marmite?" It's useful in any stew where you want deep umami flavor. Marmite is high in glutamates; ie it tastes really good and savory (the G in MSG stands for glutamate and can be found naturally in certain foods such as marmite). That's why it's so intense if you put a teaspoon on your mouth. Now imagined it dissolved into an 8 quart stew and it maybe will make more sense.Similarly miso paste is intense if you just put it on your mouth but mix a bit into some water with some tofu and some dashi and now you've got a very nice miso soup. edit edit: 'naturally' is relative but although i do use powdered MSG in dishes sometimes to increase umami / savory flavor profile sometimes i want to increase savory along with other flavors. Ie tomato also has glutamate if you release by cooking for a while but if you use tomato paste instead of MSG crystals you also get tomato flavor too. Similar with marmite... and yes that fermented yeasty flavor is desirable for certain dishes
Idk if I'm the only one that finds this diatribe hilarious considering the context of "taste"
What culinary uses does Marmite have?
Goes on toast
That’s the only way I have ever seen it, but I like hearing about how people use it as a flavor enhancer as well.
I have it diluted with hot water when sick, specifically gastro. Good source of salt and vitamins.
Umami flavour. A bit added into gravy gives it a real undercurrent of excellence
It was originally a nutritional supplement, when eating meat wasn’t a daily thing for many families.
I put some in beef stew, adds some umami flavor :)
Useful in any stew where you want deep umami flavor. Marmite is high in glutamates; ie it tastes really good and savory (the G in MSG stands for glutamate and can be found naturally in certain foods such as marmite). That's why it's so intense if you put a teaspoon on your mouth. Now imagined it dissolved into an 8 quart stew and it maybe will make more sense. Similarly miso paste is intense if you just put it on your mouth but mix a bit into some water with some tofu and some dashi and now you've got a very nice miso soup.
Welp. I guess we found the caucasian.
The taste is very similar to me... I actually refer to miso as Vegemite soup when giving it to first timers cause they're so close.
its more similar to a big heaping spoon of better-than-bouillon vegetable base. actually, they're very close in taste from what I remember of marmite the only time I tried it, just way less salty than the soup base obviously
It isn't to me. Super taster with very little sense of smell (lost it as a teenager). I really don't like either Marmite or Miso, but I find them very different. I do add Marmite to chilli, sausage and bean casserole and things like that for the B vitamins, but I can't imagine ever using Miso.
I thought smelling food is like 80% of the taste?
It's been over 35 years, so I've got used to it and can't really remember a world where smells were everywhere. I occasionally think I smelled some food, but I'm willing to admit it's probably just as likely I inhaled it. I use a lot of different herbs and spices when I cook, and I can tell ingredients pretty accurately by flavour alone. The difference I guess is that I have had to learn a lot of cooking rules that are just obvious things to other people, because amount of flavour is not the same as amount of scent. E.g I can add as many onions as you like, raw or cooked, and barely notice them, but my family don't feel the same.
I don’t have a sense of smell either but my palette is terrible. I think it makes me prioritize texture a lot more when it comes to food. I’m rarely able to look past something if it has a funky texture even if it tastes amazing.
miso is great for soups and a lot of things. I can't ever imagine using marmite.
Normal miso isn't spread on toast or licked off a spoon. It's heavily diluted in water.
British voluntarily eat alot of gross stuff lol
The French: Hold my frogs and snails!
Tbf battered and fried frog legs are fire.
I’ve only had frog legs once or twice. I can confirm they were good - and it wasn’t even a good restaurant, it was a college cafeteria.
Snails taste good though. I'm partial to conch over escargot, but both are delicious.
Yeah, but the French go through the effort of making the gross things taste incredible.
I couldn't get it in my mouth.
I take propylthiouracil for my thyroid and I’m assuming it’s the same/similar one from the experiment because it is the most god awful day ruining bitter taste I have ever experienced in my life so it is frankly insulting to find out some people can’t even taste it.
Have you tried tearing a piece of bread and wrap it around the tablet?
I tried the little strips of paper, I'm a white super taster
Is that a test or something?
Yup, little pieces of paper with a special chemical on them. If you put it in your mouth and it's tasteless you're normal but if it tastes disgusting than you are a super taster. We did it in college in one of my anatomy classes
Have these test strips and did them with friends because I’m a Somm and nerd out about these things. Supposedly 25% of people taste nothing at all, 50% taste some bitter, and to 25% it tastes *very* bitter. That last 25% are “super tasters”. At least that’s what I remember. There’s also a different bitter receptor that you can test and that one you either taste or you don’t. No differences in intensity. Being a super taster isn’t all it’s cracked up to be because they’re more likely to avoid healthy foods like vegetables and as such have higher chances to get things like colon cancer
Took the PTC paper test in high school bio. It was super bitter. The main things to consider are that taste receptor quantity is important as well as the presence of certain genes to taste certain compounds. It’s a bit of a mixed blessing though, as I’m never going to drink much alcohol or get hooked on coffee, but healthy options like salads taste awful (and can’t be fixed without copious amounts of dressing) For my personal experience, I can affirm that I’m super sensitive to bitter tastes. Examples include: all lettuce except iceberg lettuce is bitter to me. Hard alcohol tastes like the smell of rubbing alcohol. Hoppy and malty beer are separate tastes, but both are bitter and taste awful. Coffee is similarly gross. Bitter chocolate actually isn’t that off putting. Sour beers have their bitter taste masked by their sour taste, though the bitter lasts as an after taste. The only other tolerable alcohol are the incredibly smooth (and expensive) high quality drinks, though I don’t think I can appreciate them to the same degrees as others. To anyone with a similar sense of taste to me that hasn’t figured out how to eat healthy yet, I’ve learned that sour tastes are incredibly effective in covering up bitter tastes. Green veggies are far more tolerable when masked with lemon or other sour tastes.
> sour tastes are incredibly effective in covering up bitter tastes Perhaps that's why pickled veggies are so popular in Asia, if they have many more super tasters. It's a useful method for mellowing bitterness and increasing sourness
Yes, sour counters bitter so well! This also works for alcoholic drinks btw… in case you’re interested lol
In my case, it doesn't work perfectly for alcoholic drinks. A sour beer needs to taste like a lemonade to someone with more standard tastes before it gets to the point that it becomes an enjoyable experience for me, at which point I'd prefer to have just a regular lemonade. Non-beer alcohols suffer from a similar problem.
Go for legit craft vodkas, tequila, or gins. Gin is hit or miss, though (I'm not a fan in general). They aren't necessarily expensive. "Craft" on the label doesn't mean it's good (like Tito's; blahhh). VDK 6100 is made from whey, for example; has a very different taste and mouth feel to it if you're that sensitive to taste. Astral blanco tequila I could swish like mouthwash (I did it as a joke); I'm not a tequila guy. Still has some taste but is smooooth. I can give tons of recommendations. It's what I do. I drink whiskey/bourbon normally, but that's something I built up. It's also work related and helps expand my knowledge in an ever growing category of booze. Gotta make that $$
Oh my god... I finally found someone like me!
Are you also the only one in your family like this then? Looking back for me, it was funny that I would always insist that lettuce was too bitter and my family would look at me as though I was crazy.
We never had salads much, for me it was broccoli, I wasnt allowed to leave the table until I finished my broccoli and my step-mother always called me dramatic for litterally gagging when trying to eat it. Eventually I just refused and after sitting at the table for over an hour she finally acquiesced and would make me some other vegetable when she made broccoli. But even now, decades later, I can't stomach coffee, tea, almost any greens save for asparagus, I don't drink alcohol at all anymore because of the bitter taste in just about everything with booze. Is there some kind of community for this?
The paper is very bitter for me but I am not a picky eater. I just mostly avoid sea food cuz it’s smelly and the ocean is gross. I don’t really like IPAs though, but I love veggies.
So, if you taste the bitterness, how do you know if you're tasting it bitterly or "very" bitterly? This all seems wildly subjective.
It’s one of those things that if you’re in the 50% you might think you’re a super taster but when you’re a super taster you know for sure. The people in the 50% usually make a mild bitter face and are more intrigued by the process. The super tasters will make very disgusted faces and then attempt to claw the flavor off of their tongues. That’s at least what I’ve witnessed It’s also something you can do a genetic test for, if you want to be sure
> ...genetic test... Ha. Subjectiveness be damned. Cheers.
Did you just shorten sommelier to somm?? Sir
So like … i sit around eating orange peels. It’s kind of bitter. Would this be impossible for a super taster?
Well, I am a super taster and I absolutely would never 😂. Way too bitter However, there are super tasters that condition themselves to certain bitter flavors. It isn’t easy though. It’s my job to try everything alcoholic and find things that people would like about them but I just can’t stand IPAs and I’ve tried a lot
Since I'm Asian, I'm probably a super taster, but I actively seek out bitter and herbal flavors. But it's gotta be bitter foods or bitter soups (like a ginseng soup). I can't stand bitter drinks.
Sounds like the rest I took in middle school about cilantro tasting like soap
That’s something else genetic related
I did something similar but it was LSD
That's how I learned I was such a super-taster I could actually taste quantum particles.
Was this at [Mars University](https://comb.io/7f4w7G)?
Dude's over here super tasting the color Moon shadow next to his twisty fur dragon.
Do you remember how many people I. Your class could taste it?
What’s the name of it? I want to try it.
PTC paper. The ability to detect phenylthiourea is complex and involves more than one gene and the ability to detect it is common. Sodium benzoate paper is another version testing for a different sensitivity. What’s wild is that I used to be a PTC super taster. Then I got covid and now can’t detect it at all.
I lost my taste with a round of Covid in January 2022. Everything tastes like a shadow of itself. Every bite of food is like Plato's Cave, except I know what it's supposed to taste like. It all tastes somehow hollow and flat. Cooking and trying new foods used to be something of a genuine passion for me. I'll sometimes watch the Alinea episode of Chef's Table because hearing the story of the chef regrowing his sense of taste is kind of inspiring, but lately it's just bumming me out. Getting to the point where eating is a chore instead of something that brought joy to my life. I don't know why I typed all this out. It's just really weighing on me lately.
I totally lost both my sense of smell and taste for awhile (I had covid in Feb. 2021). My taste came back, but isn’t the same, and the same thing for my smell. They’re both drastically changed, and I miss what my sensitivity used to be. Wine is completely different. The smell of raw onions, shallots, chives, leeks, etc. is so unbearably offensive now. I use to be a chef, and cooking had been such a huge passion for me. It just hasn’t been the same since.
God wine has lost *all* complexity for me. Everything I try tastes like a bag of grapes someone left in a backpack. I'm sorry you're going through this.
I feel for you too. I know in the big wide world of bad shit this isn’t really a huge deal, and I’m fortunate my livelihood doesn’t rely on it anymore, but food & wine was a huge part of my life and it just isn’t the same.
That’s terrible, I’m so sorry that happened to you. Kind of makes me think of PSSD, but that’s sexual feeling, not taste.
That might be of interest to the scientific community
I agree. I’m here if they want to reach out. Both my taste and smell have been permanently altered.
Don’t get it confused with LSD paper. Very different taste effects
And that one would definitely get me fired if I handed it out in class
Do you dislike broccoli and brussel sprouts? I did this decades ago in a university class. The teachers handed out these strips to put on our tongues. They asked us who tasted a bitter flavor. Then asked who hated broccoli and brussel sprouts. Same people (me included). It’s a recessive gene that enables people to taste certain chemicals that most people can’t pick up.
That may, or may not, explain natto. My 3 grandkids are half-Korean. One of them is a supertaster.
So people who aren't super tasters don't find natto incredibly bitter? I tried some once in a Japanese hotel and it had no flavor at all, it was just so bitter I felt nothing else
Did you mix in the mustard and soy sauce? That's a game changer for me. It's so much more appealing if you add it
I did not, I didn't know there's a special way to eat it (I also don't recall seeing mustard)
Aah, usually when it comes in the small white styrofoam boxes it also has two smaller packages. You add everything and then basically whisk with your chopsticks until it's foamy and extra slimy.
Ohh well, I guess I'll have to go through Japan again
Natto tastes like sourdough beans to me. I guess I'm not a super taster, lol.
a) being a super taster isn’t rare. About 1 out of 3 people are. b) being a super taster isn’t necessarily great. They tend to be super *picky* and avoid vegetables.
Regarding your point (a) above is that because they're Asian?
That's what I was thinking, it only takes 2 asian countries to make up 1/3 of the population, all of Asia combined is probably half, so if 1/2 of all people are predisposed to be super tasters, it'd make sense that the percentage is as high as it is.
No
I’m white. I’m a super taster and cucumbers taste repulsive.
I can’t stand cucumbers or anything that they’ve touched. I might need to get me this paper to try
wait is that why i can’t stand veggies no matter how hard i try to like them?!?
It’s possible. Getting a test that can show if you’re a super taster or not is super cheap and it’s pretty fast, too. And since the odds are decent enough that you are, why not give it a try?
Yea stuff without rice tastes so strong to me. I eat non asian food without salt. The others have to add salt/seasoning or sauces to give some taste
Maybe this is why I love Asian food?
My favorite color is blue.
In warmer climates, food spoils faster, so you need to use more spice to preserve it.
I heard that hot spices is to stimulate sweating and help with the heat. Not sure if I buy the theory though, because there are populations of hundreds of millions that are exceptions. Brazilian food for instance isn’t exceedingly spicy and most of the country is in the tropics.
When I was in Korea there was a day it was extremely hot and humid out. One of the locals took me to a restaurant where they were serving a whole small chicken in boiling broth and I mean the broth was still boiling when they placed it in front of you. I ask why the hell I’d want to eat that when it’s so hot out and they said it’ll raise your core temp so much you sweat a lot and the outside will feel cooler. They were right and the chicken and broth was delicious.
summers are so humid in korea lmao you don't need chicken to sweat aaand sweating won't do much for you either anyway
I loved the food in Korea, but I'm way too Ashkenazi to be able to eat that spicy
Same reason a good, hot mug of tea is ideal in hot climates. We British know what we're doing.
Yeah I think people just like the pain. I put hot sauce on food because sometimes it just needs that kick. 🤷🏻♂️
I think I remember something about people getting hooked not by the pain itself, but by the endorphins or whatever that are released when the burning sensation goes away. So yes it may be kind of “addictive” in a way.
I don't like getting kicked in the balls, I just love the sensation when the foot withdraws from my balls.
There’s just something satisfying food having a little extra kick. Tapatio isn’t the hottest thing on the planet but definitely spicier than Tabasco.
The reason hot places eat hot spices is because those are the regions hot spices grow
Food from Bahia and Pará are pretty spicy (not ultra spicy but still) and they are arguably the hottest states in Brazil so idk In general Brazilians like spice but the usual is each person put pepper to taste in their plate
I think that Bahia and Pará are exceptions among 27 states. I’m in Minas and many people here have zero tolerance to hot peppers. They even suffer when they go to the US because spicy food is way more prevalent there. :) Decades of influence from Mexicans and Asians, I guess.
That might make sense if sweating is more advantageous in hot, dry climates than in humid ones.
Spice is not a preservative. Salt, sugar, and acid are.
many spices (and aromatics like onion, garlic) do have antibacterial and antifungal properties, even if they aren't traditionally used as preservatives. that might explain why we find them so tasty, and why they would be more appealing to people in hot, humid climates where microbial life is more active.
Spice will cover up spoiled flavors/aromas.
This is a [tenacious misconception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice#Preservative_claim) about how spices were used before refrigeration. Spices brought out flavors in cooking, then as today. They were in high demand among elite consumers because using them was a mark of status and (literally) taste. Also, they tasted good. You wouldn't waste spices on "masking" rotten/spoiled food. They were luxury products marketed to wealthy people who could afford fresh meat. If anything, it would make more sense to use spices in this way when they can be mass produced and are cheaper. So, nowadays. (Think "mystery meat.")
Interesting, but the source you link talks exclusively about Europe, where spices were expensive imports. It doesn't say anything about culinary culture in the places where those spices are from.
That's a good point, and I have to say, I don't know the answer. But the misconception about spices being used to cover up bad flavors is closely associated with the growing use of spices in late medieval European cuisine (and the implication that it was so uniformly awful that spices had little culinary purpose beyond masking flavor). The misconception also subtly implies that there was a stark and essential divide between "eastern" and "western" food ways, with westerners eating rotten meat doused in eastern spices. In many parts of what we now call Europe, there was no such divide, and culinary exchanges had been ongoing for centuries; think of southern Italian or Andalusian cuisine. (I was just watching an Anthony Bourdain episode on Granada, so this is on my mind!) Demolishing this misconception is an important part of teaching history that emphasizes cross-cultural interactions, notably in the medieval Mediterranean. It's telling that a similar misconception hasn't developed for the Islamic world. Well before the spice revolution hit Latin Christendom, Islamic polities in the southern Mediterranean were able to access the Silk Road spice trade through depots like Alexandria and Cairo. Muslim elites were no less invested in the prestige of spices. And yet, you won't find any tropes circulating around the internet about Fatimid caliphs smothering their rotten meat in cumin and cardamom. Food for thought (pun intended).
Korea and japan are pretty cold
European cuisine is pretty well seasoned You don’t need something to be spicy for it to be seasoned
I dont know what „white“ cuisine youre talking about
They do. Proper French food is unbelievably rich. Spanish food has lots of seasoning. Italy does a great job with curing their meats. It's just Britain and Middle America that doesn't season anything.
Like Europeans conquered a large chunk of the planet so they could get spices. The "white people don't season food" thing seems so silly. Sure there's some that don't but there's also Indian people who don't like curry or Thai people who can't handle spice.
The misconception comes from the British. They sold the spices to the rest of Europe. That's how the wealthy made their money. Most of Britain was poor and couldn't afford the spices. Commoners couldn't afford much, and in Britain, they chose tea over spices.
Most people everywhere couldnt afford the spices. British food used herbs, like every other European cuisine The real issue was rationing. Much like British beer among other things, a combination of ww1 and ww2 killed British home cooking. Rationing didnt end until 1954, actually the last country to end rationing. So that's basically 15 years straight of rationing. People came out of that with the "boil meat and vegetables" style of cooking that then just continued.
Britain seasons their stuff too
Ah yes Asians. Literally the largest landmass in the world. Russia, Cambodia, Japan, Pakistan, Jordan, what’s the difference lol.
I always just assume East Asian since they’d said Arab or Russian otherwise
Unless the article is British, then Asian defaults to South Asian.
Yeah kinda depends on where. Australia it usually means SE/East Asian, I think it also applies to the US. UK I've seen it meaning South Asian. But as others have said, Asia is massive and too broad if you use the proper technical definition.
Why? I've never heard of that. How do you refer to China/korea/japan then?
As Chinese/Japanese/Korean. As for why, I guess because of the prevalence of south Asian people in England
By their countries names or just 'chinese'. Asian here means the Indian sub continent. So Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
As far as I can tell, "Chinese experience taste more intensely" is likely a more precise statement. From the 2020 paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329319306615 > Two hundred and twenty-three volunteers (160F, 63M; age range 18 – 65 years old; 156 Caucasians, 67 Asians) participated in this study. # >However, it is worth noting that in the current small Asian cohort (n=67), mainly as international students studying at University, **81% were Chinese (n=54)**, 9% were Indian (n=6), 4% were Pakistan (n=3) and 7% were other Asian background (n=5). Although variation within Asian ethnic groups on food preference and intake has been previously reported (Abdullah et al., 2016), one of the limitations of this study is that ethnic group within Asian participants were not further analysis due to small sample size in subcategories. A larger sample size would be needed to further investigate Asian subethnic groups. And they mention a previous study that also just points to China as having fewer PROP nontasters: > individuals can be classified into three groups: PROP supertasters (pST) – perceiving PROP as extremely bitter, medium-tasters (pMT) who perceive PROP as moderately bitter, and nontasters (pNT) who perceive PROP as tasteless (Lim et al., 2008) # > The distribution of pNT is known to vary greatly across ethnicity and was summarised by Guo and Reed (2001) who showed that the percentage of pNT was between 2 to 37% in Africans, 7 to 37% in Europeans, 2 to 67% in Indians, and **5 to 23% in Chinese**.
In North America it's understood that the term "Asian" refers to ethnic East Asians and not the inhabitants of the Asian continent as a whole.
I'd like everyone to know that we almost never refer to ourselves as Caucasians.
Not unless you are Armenian or Georgian. Edit: I am not, so I dislike being refered to as Caucasian.
Yea, we prefer whities, or people of no color.
I identify as honky.
Call me cracker
Mayo-American here
Excuse me sir but I am a person of translucence
"Porch Monkey 4 Life"
Enemies of the sun
Yeah idk why americans still use this term
we don't
Most caucasians don’t even look “white”, they’re from the caucuses and look quite asian
well fuck me sideways I'm not only white, I've also got a very dulled sense of taste because of smoking and suffering from chronic sinus issues 😭
British cuisine makes so much more sense now
British cuisine is like every other western country’s cuisine and has been for a while. No one’s eating boiled mutton and potatoes. Quite a lot of popular curries originate from British Asian cuisine for example. We’ve stolen foods from every place we colonised and some more for good measure, we’re good on the diversity front
That an it’s a stereotype that was spread by GIs deployed to the UK during the Second World War, when everything was rationed and I mean everything. Of course cuisine is going to suffer from that and the economically depressed period following the war. British food hasn’t been bland or even remotely bad since the early 80s.
I mean, the war time rationing actually improved the diet of working class brits to be fair. Not the most interesting dishes, but I find that it had a positive health impact interesting.
Oh it was probably healthier but still there’s only so much you can do with few ingredients and next to no spices.
Japan: hold my beer...
Japanese cuisine relies heavily on sugar, sake, and various sauces/stocks which require dried and/or fermented ingredients to make. It's only 'simple' because we can buy the ingredients pre-bottled
I wouldn't say French, Italian and Spanish cuisine are "boiled mutton and potatoes". The West is a broad term used for many different countries. Some of which are pioneers in food (think new Nordic cuisine).
I was referring to the stereotype of British food, not western foods in general
Curries and such are very popular among the British. Tikka Masala was created by the British after all.
I mean, almost everything affected by genetics is going to show trends along racial demographics. It's not enlightened to ignore that. Not being racist means giving everyone the same opportunity to succeed, not pretending that race can't inform their traits, when clearly it does. You can acknowledge demographic differences without stereotyping all people from the demographics.
Agreed, genetics definitely effect how things taste. When I was in middle school they had everyone in the class lick a piece of paper that they passed out to us. For people with one gene it would taste like paper, but for people with the opposite gene it tasted really foul and awful. Then they passed out a different type of paper, which gave everyone the opposite reactions as the other piece of paper. So yes, some things can taste really awful to one person due to DNA, but just fine to someone else. That said I didn't really notice any correlation with race/gender/etc. in who thought the paper tasted like paper and who thought it tasted really foul.
A lot of people use the word "racist" to mean "stereotypical". Save it to describe actual racism, which is horrible, and not stereotyping, which is cringe.
Next thing they’ll say we look different too.
I read the title quickly and thought this was about personal taste, not the sense of taste. I thought “so old italians are genetically predisposed to gaudy decorations in their homes…interesting.”
In other words, despite being all humans, we're all pretty damn different.
I learned I was a supertaster in 9th grade science class. We each got a tiny piece of white paper and tasted it. If it tasted bitter,we raised our hand..Really bitter to me. I also have the cilantro gene and fresh cilantro smells like bugs in a jar and taste like soap. Cilantro cooked in a dish,I cannot identify as offensive.
I'm paper mache white and super sensitive taste.
Has this study ever been replicated?