durian really does smell rotten

sometimes i wonder how we discovered that durians are a desirable food source: they’re spiky and hard on the outside, smell rotten on the inside, and the little white pods are stringy on the outside and custardy on the inside. i suppose that back whenever civilization discovered durians, the smell may not have been so off-putting because they may not have known what a rotten smell is in the first place. and conceptually, durian is pretty awesome because it smells like one thing, but tastes like another, but since your olfactory and taste senses are interdependent, then the sweet taste is constantly fighting off the aroma of rottenness. mmm. appetizing. in reality, seeing the squishy, wrinkly kernels inside the shell of the durian just makes me want to throw them at people – rather than tomatoes, right? they seem like they would have really great splatter action.

you can get a couple of kernels (read: more than enough) of durian for NT$100 (about USD$3). it’s true that the inside inside – the custardy part rather than the stringy outer layer of the kernel – is much sweeter than the outside. the whiff of rottenness that you get is subtle at first – just here and there – but as you carry it around for longer, the aroma seems to develop and mature. (however, the increasingly strong smell may have been because the kernels got stuffed into somebody’s pocket and smooshed about). it’s kind of like duck blood: i’m happy i tried it, and now i’m done with it unless i happen to be starving at some point in my life and there are only durians and duck blood to eat. so there you go.