Before I get 100 comments to tell me to get a covid test, I am not losing my sense of taste, but I do want to talk about it for a bit.
One weird thing that I have always experienced is how things taste like other things for me. For example, a latte basically tastes like hot chocolate to me. Every time I eat pineapple I taste coconut in the background. Tonight, I wanted something sweet, so I grabbed a handful of chocolate cover espresso beans, and I tasted a hint of… tobacco. And so on. And it happens a lot.
Does this happen to anyone else?
CaseyL
Since you stopped drinking and smoking, your palette has probably become more sensitive. Many flavors have undertones – even fresh fruit can, depending on when, where and how it’s grown.
Also, since you love to cook, you’ve probably trained your sense of taste to pick up on subtleties.
Then again, maybe you’re developing synesthesia ?
Chetan Murthy
There are some wines that seem to taste buttery to me. All part of the magic of organic chemistry, one supposes.
Amir Khalid
You haven’t lost your sense of smell. It’s just been … miswired, let’s say, with curious results.
Leto
get a covid testthe tree is too close to the houseJust a very refined palate? Maybe some of those products are produced on the same production line, or the same plant (thinking some type of cross contamination)? I have a friend who has Synesthesia, and that’s pretty trippy (in a neat way).Edit: @CaseyL: I was also thinking it might be related to him quitting drinking/smoking, but wasn’t sure how long this had been going in. He said “always”, so…
Ukko
I always liked the way freshly cut turnip smells of sagebrush. I tell this to people and they think I am crazy. Just a similar anecdatum.
HumboldtBlue
I think it’s time for some collard greens and ham hocks. That’s what I think.
TaMara (HFG)
I’d suspect you were a super-taster, except you seem to like cruciferous veggies and most super tasters find them too strong to tolerate. I can taste all kinds of different flavors in coffees…
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/supertaster
westyny
You may have a not unpleasant brush of synesthesia. It could be a lot worse. Some people bite into a juicy hamburger and taste an aluminum dodecahedron.
NotMax
“A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa.”
– Stephen Potter
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Kattails
Yes to the pineapple and coconut thing. Also, cherries have an almond under-taste by themselves, which is why they pair so well with almonds in baked goods. And of course cilantro tastes like soap (yes I know that bit is genetic). Chemistry, baby.
craigie
“Does this happen to anyone else?”
Probably.
Poe Larity
It is a common trait of those of us who were dropped off The Motherhip. Your sense of smell can be calibrated by smelling your finger.
Matt McIrvin
It sounds like your sense of taste is fine. You’re just fairly perceptive and detecting subtle notes in things.
RaflW
A good cold-brew iced coffee definitely tastes like chocolate to me. But I find it is often in the aromas of things that I smell other things not actually present in the food (aromas are an important part of taste!).
Keith P.
@Kattails: Same here – which is one of the really great things about a fresh, ripe pineapple – the coconut undertones. Same for some kinds of coffee – African coffees taste chocolatey; Latin American ones are acidic, so a good, smooth cup of African coffee is gonna be chocolatey (my #1 is Tanzanian peaberry mixed with Ethiopian Yirgacheffe…3 days after roasting it’s like sugarless hot chocolate)
Paul W.
All of the associations you have above are ones I’ve experienced – especially coffee being like chocolate. Iced coffee or a very fine espresso especially.
mrmoshpotato
I find the Moon tastes like cheese.
oldster
Yeah, ditto on pineapple and coconut, as well as Kattails’ point about cherries and almonds.
There are certain coffees that, when freshly ground, have a lot of overlap with skunk spray. And I like it! Perhaps odder — sometimes when a skunk has sprayed in the neighborhood, I’ll get a whiff of it and think, “yummm! coffee!”. Of course, skunk spray also has some other components that are more repellent, and you sure as hell don’t want to be close to it. But distance fractionates the volatiles.
Chetan, what you are detecting is diacetyl, which occurs naturally in yeast fermentation and is especially cultivated in Chardonnays — I suspect it is sometimes artificially added to them because people love their buttery Chardonnays. It’s the same industrial chemical that they put into microwave popcorn, which dissolves the lungs of the workers — no joke — causing “popcorn lung,” which is a pretty hideous disease.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacetyl
James E Powell
Back when craft breweries were becoming popular, I was smoking two packs of Marlboro Reds a day & chugging those IPAs. I haven’t smoked since 2013, but whenever I drink an IPA I can not only smell & taste tobacco smoke, it’s like I can feel a cigarette in my hand.
There are a couple other things that evoke cigarettes like that.
Ruckus
Do you understand that most of your taste actually comes from your sense of smell? You can only taste sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami/savory. Everything else is your sense of smell. Lose that and food tastes pretty much like nothing, especially if you have to be on a low salt diet. It’s fun. Food enjoyment becomes more about texture than taste. I knew my sense of smell was completely gone when I was cooking garlic shrimp and someone sitting 15 ft away could tell me how good it smelled while I was standing over the pan making it and couldn’t smell a thing. That was about 5 yrs ago. You lose your sense of smell and nothing tastes the same. I’ve told the story here before when I went black blind for 15-20 minutes once. So I’ve lost use of 2 of my senses before, one temporary, one seemingly permanent. You want them. Having lost a part of life that we mostly take for granted has given me an immense amount of respect for people with disabilities, and how they can have lives and look at that bright side of life. You see that a lot at the VA, people with missing body parts, that look like an almost impossibility to live with, and they aren’t. Likely difficult to very difficult, but not impossible.
M. Bouffant
Red wine gives me an aftertaste or undertone or whatever of onion. Not overwhelming, but there.
Ten Bears
What Casey said but wait … a latte is not hot chocolate?
lowtechcyclist
@Poe Larity:
Mom is said to have occasionally gotten careless while carrying us around when we were babies.
Booger
Nature is inherently conservative. Each thing you eat comprises dozens or hundreds of compounds which serve as flavor components. This palette of compounds reappears in various combinations in all kinds of things, from herbs and spices to seed and fruits and vegetables to flowers and honeys and all kinds of things. And some of the categories are fascinating, like thiols, compounds containing sulfur, which run the gamut from the most delicate aromas of the skin and pit of a peach to skunk spray and rotting onions and durian.
Camphor is an example; the same compounds are found in rosemary and pine needles in different combinations, and a touch enhances flavors of meats amazingly while too much is toxic.
Thiols and esters make life worth living. If you think one thing tastes like another, it’s probably because it does, not anything to do with your wiring.
satby
I love the chemistry of smell, taste, and memory; because both senses are strongly tied to memories in a lot of cases and the perception of both can be strongly influenced by any memories associated. @Booger:’s explanation is closest to how I understand the interplay, and what @Ruckus: said about ability to taste too.
Math Guy
If I take a bite of white cheddar cheese and wash it down with a swig of black coffee I get the overwhelming taste of cocoa. Avoid applesauce and milk at all costs.
lee
And when you taste mustard you get a hint of missing?
Audrey
@Ruckus: I agree reasonably strongly with this “Food enjoyment becomes more about texture than taste.” Except that I have never had a sense of smell so how food tastes to me without it is just how it’s always tasted. It means I’ve always been very fussy about the texture of my food!
nclurker
@Chetan Murthy:
:buttery”in wine is created by a secondary bacteriological
fermentation.called malolactic fermentation which changes the
harsh malicacids of fermentation,to lactic acids,which are milk acids,hence butter.
a votre sante’
bbleh
I’d suggest maybe cutting back a little on the mountain mushroom tea.
Helena Montana
No, but my 11 y/o granddaughter had non-symptomatic COVID. Since she’s again tested negative, though, all food tastes like bananas to her, and she is fatigued and exhausted all the time.
bluefoot
I’ll second Keith and others. IMO most food quality fresh fruits and vegetables have a lot of different flavor notes to them. For me, pineapple can (but not always) have a backnote of coconut. Fresh coconut itself has different flavors for me too. Kiwifruit is another one. My parents had an apple tree whose fruit had distinct wine and rose notes, which you could taste most strongly either right after being picked off the tree or in a warm pie. (Mmmm….now I want pie.)
Coffee definitely can have a lot of different flavor notes depending on origin and roasting. I’ve found I have decided geographical preferences for coffee beans.
Long way of saying, you’re not weird at all, John.
oldster
@bluefoot:
Apples — yes, it’s amazing how many flavors they contain.
Take a fresh apple and grate it on a coarse grater — I will almost always get strong cinnamon notes from it. That’s part of why cinnamon goes so well in an apple pie (or a baked apple, or apple sauce or…).
les
Happens t every wine reviewer, ever.
Motivated Seller
You may be running another sinus infection. It makes me sense all sorts of weird tastes, like: fried rotten onions with iron filings, or burnt milk with tobacco sauce.