#evenshadowshavestories

[evenshadowshavestories]

Okay so I’ve been going down the celery rabbit hole, out of curiosity here is a poll based off of descriptions of it I’ve seen various places on the internet:

How does celery taste/smell to you?

Mild/no flavor

Bitter

Peppery

Metallic

Floral and/or sweet

Akin to sweat and or/urine

None of these are similar to what I taste

Voting ended onJul 11, 2023

Info under the cut

So I have found one paper referencing celery as containing androstenone (the celery listed in passing along with things like human sweat, boar saliva, and truffles), and another paper which listed the differences in what people perceive when smelling androstenone.

According to these papers, androstenone is apparently an example of “specific anosmia”, or the inability to detect a specific odor.

That is, some people can smell it and others don’t.

From the more recent paper I found, published in 2004:

“Androstenone is variously described as having an unpleasant (urine, sweat) or pleasant odour (sweet, floral), yet a fraction of the population cannot detect its presence. Moreover, androstenone is a pheromone in boars and is found in urine and axillary sweat in humans [..]”

As a person who has only experienced celery as like, almost tasteless just sort of fresh-flavored, this blew my mind. Not only were there people who actually got a flavor out of it, but also that the people who taste it could get (what seems to me like) completely different tastes from it?

I unfortunately am not a celery expert, but my understanding from what I’ve found while going down the rabbit hole is this:

Mild/no flavor: you probably don’t perceive androstenone

Bitter or Peppery: does not seem related to androstenone, seems to be related to (or at least chalked up to) differences in growing condition

Metallic: you might have a food allergy; a metallic taste in the mouth can apparently be an early sign of anaphylaxis. I couldn’t find anything describing celery itself as having a metallic taste.

Floral/sweet or sweaty/like urine: you can probably smell androstenone

Anyway I’m not an expert and this was just for fun, but I wanted to share because I could barely find anything on this connection and the difference in perceived scents (though I found plenty of people either confused that other people thought celery tasted/smelled strong, or confused that anyone could stomach it).

Links to the two papers I found:

Nearly half the adult human population does not perceive an odor when sniffing androstenone (5 alpha-androst-16-en-3-one), a volatile steroi

Wysocki, C J et al. “Ability to perceive androstenone can be acquired by ostensibly anosmic people.”

The scents of androstenone in humans

“The scents of androstenone in humans” Ricardo C Araneda and Stuart Firestein

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[evenshadowshavestories]

it’s interesting how cuisine varies from family to family, even in the same area and even with related families. 

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Me, being presented with a style of food I’ve never had before: uh wait what?