Recently I noticed that a very popular ingredient nowadays is lavender, which in many people causes persistent associations with soap and the perfumery and cosmetic industry.
On the one hand, there is nothing strange in this, on the other, it is rather strange when a person who has tasted lavender raff from your glass claims: there is soap! And you yourself don't feel the soap there.
I decided to conduct a small culinary investigation and understand: why do some people feel soap where others do not?
And amazing things turned out.
It turns out that the soap that does not exist is felt by people not only in lavender, and the fault on this is not at all that lavender is often used in cosmetics, so there is no way to blame the association.
The taste of soap, and a pronounced one, some can feel in cilantro, in lemongrass, in sweet orange, laurel laurel (sounds like butter, but that is exactly what the title was given by publications in English, but I am not very botany with botany, I suspect it is noble laurel), in basil, in hops, in oregano, in marjoram and even... in marijuana.
I haven't eaten the last one, I can't say anything, and I have quite friendly relations with the rest of the herbs, except that I don't really like laurel as a seasoning.
And the reason... isomers of the terpene alcohol linalool, or rather, two "mirror" forms of the isomer - the two forms of the compound are mirror images of each other.
The isomer of terpene alcohol (S) - (+) - linalool, which has the name corianndrol, and it is contained in cilantro, lemongrass, sweet orange.
The terpene alcohol isomer - ® - (-) - linalool, also known as licareol, can be found in laurel, lavender and basil.
But the most interesting thing is that not every person can feel the isomers of terpene alcohol like soap.
To do this, you must have a genetic predisposition. Rather, you need to have the OR6A2 gene (it is he who determines the increased sensitivity, and aldehydes), and also the gene responsible for the increased perception of bitterness.
You know, such information makes you think that genetics predetermines many of our eating habits and addictions!