#(lots of thiols are notoriously stinky)

[an-organized-confusion]

Back to thinking about neurodiversity and food science.

There are so many aromatic compounds out there that can be perceived differently by different people. Either you can’t smell it, you can and it’s pleasant, you can and it’s unpleasant... or you can and it’s a mixture of both. To say nothing about how concentration matters here (skatole in very small amounts is floral. But after a certain point... it smells like actual shit.)

(I think at times it’s an acquired taste and cultural, too.)

And just thinking about Remus liking stuff BECAUSE of the so-called malodorous flavors.

There’s asparagus pee’s sulfurous odor (methanethiol and S-methyl thioesters). Remus thinks that’s hilarious. (Funny since this is a sort of Punnett-style square. There’s people that can smell that pungent note, and those that can’t. There’s people that metabolize asparagus so their urine has the offending chemicals and those that don’t.)

There’s cilantro and that vaguely (or strongly) soap-like aldehyde notes. Remus loves that part. (Low-key I’ve come to love cilantro so much in things like pico de gallo and how it melds so well with tomatoes and onions... despite that aspect.)

There’s the vaguely gasoline-like backdrop in truffle products on top of the intense pungency to them. Part of it’s because if it’s not the real stuff, it’s carried mostly by one of the main chemicals that define truffles - 2,4-dithiapentane. (HF opened my nose to this flavor and oh man... it takes ramen and other things to the NEXT level...)

And there’s something lovely called “boar taint”! /sarcasm

It’s thanks to androstenone - a byproduct of testosterone in pork. People can be noseblind to it, or get a vanilla-like sweetness in it... or get the whiff of sweaty urine. Remus probably likes boar meat from old mating stock - instead of young and early-castrated for the HIGHEST concentration of the stuff. (This is one of those cases where I don’t like it - even if it can be subtly there thanks to butchering practices that minimize it.)

Given the whole Actual!Thomas having a chem background just makes me imagine Logan evaluating Remus’s sensory eccentricities. Granted it was pharmaceuticals, not molecular gastronomy. It’s all organic chem, anyways. :,D