I’ve been wondering for a while now if I might have that gene or whether Cilantro is just a herb i dislike. I can stomach dishes with cilantro in them, but it just stings through everything. No matter how little was put in, it tastes to me like somebody over-cilantro’d the dish. I’ve never eaten anything where I thought “Mmmh, yes, there’s a subtle hint of cilantro” - it’s always “Oh, there’s the cilantro, and it’s just too strong”.
But whenever I read about this online, people say that it tastes like soap. It’s been a couple of years since I was toddler enough to just put soap in my mouth. But in my mind, the taste of soap is mostly bitter, with an overwhelming tropical/fruity/citrussy flavor of whatever the producers decided to make the soap smell like. I also imagine it having a really unpleasant texture/mouthfeel. I have no urge to try eating soap, just so I can compare it with the taste of a herb. And I assume that most people with the Cilantro-gene also haven’t made an actual taste-comparison. So hence my question: In what way does anything - but cilantro in particular - taste like soap?


As a kid, my mother actually did the completely stupid cliche of “washing your mouth out with soap” when I said a “bad word”, so I know exactly what soap tastes like (this being cheap bar soap like Irish Spring, Zest, etc). And cilantro really does taste pretty close to that to me.
Irish spring for me. It got in and around my molars and I tasted that for hours.
Yep, same here, once it was between your teeth you were not getting rid of that taste for a long while.
thats so fucked up. sorry you went through that abuse.
Nobody should be forced to eat cilantro
lol