Nasty flavors- was Re: [Sca-cooks] period mashed turnips

[sjk3 at cornell.edu]

>>> Anybody know what substances it might be in these
>>> foods that I find so horribly objectionable?
>>
>>      It would be interesting to find out.
>>
>>      And then there's PTC and PROP....
>
> PTC and PROP?

     PTC is a chemical often used in high-school science demonstrations
(along with earlobe shape and eye color) to demonstrate genetics.  You
chew on a strip of paper with PTC on it, and see if you can taste it;
some can, some can't. PROP I've only heard of more recently.  I think
there was something in the New York Times a few years ago, but it
definitely came up in a test I was a guinea pig for.  Cornell has a Food
Science department, and they train students to run sensory evaluations.
Some are fun, involving things like macademia nuts or cheese.  One was to
determine whether the boxes Dove chocolates were packed in influenced the
flavor of the chocolate (a new ink used in printing the colors made the
cardboard smell funny).  One involved detecting bitter and astringent
effects in varying concentrations, and I discovered I'm a PROP taster
too.  It is incredibly horrid if you can taste it.  I know intellectually
that some people cannot taste it at all, but when I was trying to get the
taste out of my mouth it was hard to conceive that *anybody* could not
notice it.  The things we do for science!  :-)

Sandra Kisner
sjk3 at cornell.edu