Cilantro tastes like soap

How it works

Cilantro dislike probably comes mostly from smell, not taste, but this is not proven¹. Cilantro, the leaf of the coriander plant, gets its smell mainly from aldehydes¹. Two of them are described as soapy, fatty or pungent¹. Similar aldehydes can occur in soaps and in the smell of stink bugs⁵. People who dislike cilantro say it tastes like soap, mould, dirt or bugs².

A 2012 study by the gene-testing company 23andMe asked 14,604 customers of European ancestry if cilantro tasted like soap¹. One DNA variant, rs72921001, was linked to the answer. It was also linked to disliking cilantro in 11,851 other customers¹. The variant sits among smell receptor genes on chromosome 11. One of them, OR6A2, responds to aldehydes in lab studies, mostly of the rat version¹. The authors write only “perhaps OR6A2”¹.

The variant explains only about 0.5% of the difference between people¹. The authors suggest that many people “might initially dislike cilantro yet later come to appreciate it”¹.

One suggested cause is a specific anosmia, where a person cannot smell one odour but otherwise smells normally. Cilantro lovers might miss a soapy aldehyde, or haters might miss the pleasant compounds. This is a suggestion, not a finding².

How common it is

Of 18,495 customers of 23andMe who answered, 12.4% said soapy³. The share ran from 3.9% of South Asian to 14.1% of Ashkenazi Jewish customers³. Women said soapy more often than men¹. The customers chose to answer, so they are not a random sample.

A Toronto study of 1,381 young adults measured dislike instead. Dislike ran from 3% to 21% by group, and some groups were small². The group figures do not show how common any gene variant is⁵.

Try it

1. Pinch your nose shut and chew a fresh cilantro leaf.
2. Let go of your nose and keep chewing.
3. Notice if the taste changes. One reporter found the leaf tasted “like harmless old parsley” with his nose shut⁴. No study has measured this.

Is it a problem?

No. It is a common difference in how people sense cilantro¹. It is probably not a sign of being a supertaster. Supertasting is about a narrow group of bitter chemicals. A taste researcher said that, “to the best of my knowledge”, none are found in cilantro⁴. One twin study did link cilantro ratings to a bitter receptor gene, TAS2R50⁶. A new, sudden change in how many foods smell is different, and worth mentioning to a doctor.

History and culture

The herbalist John Gerard called coriander a “very stinking herbe”¹. In 2010, 23andMe used the same kind of survey to find gene links for asparagus pee smell and photic sneezing⁷.