The foods we hate | financial times

I will go first. I hate milk skin, that crepe film over hot milk. I blanch at caramel mousse, having eaten enough of the sickly tan stuff at school. And I have a tense relationship with broad beans, which Niki Segnit catalogs in his new book The Flavor Thesaurus: More Flavors (Bloomsbury) as “half-vegetable, half-mammalian” for its “darkly bloody, offal-like and slightly cheesy” taste. Here at least I am in good company: it is believed that Pythagoras had an aversion to broad beans due, among other things, to their resemblance to the human head.

Most dislikes come down to unfamiliarity

There are many reasons why people hate food. We are all born without liking bitterness, for example. But we get over it by looking for sophistication (eg, coffee) or intoxication (eg, alcohol). Some remain sensitive to bitterness and other pungent flavors. Genetics also means that we respond differently to certain olfactory stimuli, which is why some people find cilantro tastes like soap.

But most dislikes come down to unfamiliarity: “This wariness of novelty is exaggerated in two- to six-year-olds who insist they don’t like something even if they haven’t tried it, but it’s generally true for people of all ages. says Professor John Prescott, author of taste matters (reaction books) and specialist in food preferences.

As a Chinese culinary expert dunlop fuchsia notes: “It is normal for people to have cultural boundaries when it comes to [unfamiliar] food, because it is about safety.” On his travels in China, he has consumed delicacies such as pig stomach and intestines that he found difficult to digest. But “when I try it, I finally find that it’s okay,” she says. “That’s happened so many times now that I don’t take that initial moment of disgust seriously.”

As Segnit also points out, some flavors mask more polarizing ones: the cheese muffles the cruciferous notes of the cauliflower; the tamarind offsets the mustard smell of the papaya; the nutmeg suppresses the sulfurous acidity of the custard. She’s turning “I don’t like that” into “I haven’t found a way I like it yet,” she says of finding the right match.

Of course, that assumes you want to conquer your dislikes. “Milk skin? Just disgusting!” Segnit says with a grimace.

the hate list

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Fay Maschler, restaurant critic

“In a close race, the worst dessert at my boarding school was ‘frogspawn,’ which is how we all describe tapioca. Insidious, slimy little bubbles that I discover much later are made of cassava root (that?) received a spoonful of ‘jam’, something red and sweet from a tin with little reference to fruit. Now when I see young people lining up to drink bubble tea, I want to push them. Tapioca: could have meant a sexy dance.”

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Tom Aikens, chef

“I have always disliked smoked salmon. It’s a combination of many things, including a bad experience at some point. But it’s mainly the slimy and greasy texture that I don’t like, as well as the old fishy taste. Another thing I don’t like is our cute little anchovy, which reminds me of when I was at school taking cod liver oil. Mint choc chip is a totally disgusting mix of flavors, wrong on so many levels. Like bad air freshener. Finally, another chocolate concoction that gave me goosebumps as a kid: Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Cheap scented chocolate… Horrible!”

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Meera Sodha, cook/author

“I still mistrust the potato. ‘Bateta nu shaak’ or Gujarati potato curry was one of the most regular meals on our family table and its forced consumption dealt a life-long blow, driving me away from wet and floury potato dishes forever.”

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Lerato Umah-Shaylor, chef/author of african

“If you want to torture me, force me to eat spaghetti or any form of pasta. I always hated it, but then came to hate it even more after I was forced to eat it as a teenager in a boarding school in Nigeria. I passed out and was hospitalized. They were jollof-inspired broken spaghetti, soft and spicy with mackerel, another ingredient I can’t stand.”

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Ravinder Bhogal, food writer and restaurateur

“There’s something about kedgeree that always leaves me cold and I really don’t like the taste of smoked haddock. Maybe it’s the lingering taste of a colonized India that I find hard to swallow, or maybe it’s just the muteness of spices trying and failing to speak.”

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Tom Parker Bowles, restaurant critic

“Goat cheese. I want to love it, I really do. And I’ve tried so many times. But it’s that sinister, wild pong that does it for me. Eating a piece, however soft, tastes like licking the floor of a dirty farm”.

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Sami Tamimi, Chef/Author

“I don’t like any kind of fermented fish that has a strong smell and taste. As someone who grew up in the Middle East, I am obsessed with the smell and taste of certain fish and meats. I remember once a Swedish friend brought a can of fermented herring. He had to open it out in the open because of the smell and I didn’t dare even come close, no matter how hard I tried. The same goes for the Thai pla tuu (fried short mackerel), the boo kem salted crab used in the fresh papaya salad, and hákarl, the famous Icelandic fermented shark.”

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Niki Segnit, food writer

“I have always associated mushrooms with slugs. I don’t want to eat them, touch them or even look at them in the supermarket. I can find the smallest piece of mushroom if it has gotten into a meal. When people say, ‘Oh, I put some mushrooms in that dish but they’re diced,’ I’m like Liam Neeson in Taken. I will find them…”

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Fuchsia Dunlop, food writer

“I love cheese and butter. I quite like the cream. But I have never drank milk. My mother has always been intolerant, so we weren’t given milk to drink when we were kids and I grew up thinking it was really disgusting.”

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Jeremy Lee, Chef/Author

“Spaghetti Bolognese. I hated it as a kid. It was always something I struggled with; no real reason, other than I think I loved my Grandma’s pot of mince and pies, second only to Mom and Dad’s. I guess that reflects a severe Scottish appetite. I now adore this dish, even though it has to be made from scratch with a fine, freshly ground mincemeat bolognese – the packet is always missing somehow. Besides, I’ve never managed to cultivate an appetite for those huge, oversized pies. voluminous, filled with whipped cream and canned cherries.

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Margot Henderson, cook

“I don’t like the taste and texture of sous vide meat. I find it when a piece of beef has been cooked very slowly and for a long time it becomes limp and the texture is too soft and doughy. The taste becomes somewhat bland.”

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Jose Pizarro, cook

“I’m afraid I’m saying ‘no way Jose!’ to truffle oil: it’s overwhelmingly strong, washes out the beauty of other ingredients, gives me a stomach ache, and can ‘repeat’ for hours afterwards.”

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Rachel Roddy, food writer

At Crabtree Nursery School, when I told the dinner lady that I didn’t like stew, she told me that I didn’t like stew either. An elegant lady’s perfect return from dinner, and never forgotten. Avocado and I don’t like each other at all either, each thinking the other is slimy. So we avoid each other at all costs.

@ajesh34