Cilantro, as we all know, . To some, it tastes like soap, while to others, it tastes somewhat citrusy, clean, and refreshing. It seems like if you're in the anti-cilantro camp, you're strongly in that position, and for one famous TV food trailblazer, it was a flavor she absolutely hated.
Yep, Julia Child, who died in 2004, absolutely loathed cilantro. Child was documented saying so once on the record in an interview with Larry King on that aired in 2002. She told the talk show host that to her, cilantro "has a kind of a taste that I don't like," and mentioned that her aversion to it was quite severe.
She said it had a "dead taste," and if she saw it in a dish, she'd pick it out and throw it on the floor. I really can't think of an aversion to something I have that goes quite to those lengths, but even famous food people have their hard limits sometimes. Some people have a genetic aversion to cilantro It turns out that people's avid hate for cilantro isn't necessarily because they're picky, though that's entirely possible, too.
Cilantro contains aldehydes, which is what lends it that soap-like flavor. But there's a small population of people that perceive the flavor of cilantro so strongly to the point of aversion, and this is due to a variation in a group of their olfactory receptor genes. A 2012 study published in the journal, , dove deep into the subject, finding that at least in some European populations, a cluster of olfactory receptor genes, possibly OR6A2, might be what.