The latest effort to decipher the unique aroma signature of the durian — revered as the “king of fruits” in southeast Asia but reviled elsewhere as the world’s foulest smelling food — has uncovered several new substances that contribute to the fragrance. The research appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Martin Steinhaus and colleagues explain that durian, available in Asian food shops in the United States and elsewhere, has a creamy yellowish flesh that can be eaten fresh or used in cakes, ice cream and other foods. Some people relish the durian’s smell. Others, however, regard it as nauseating, like rotten onions. Past research identified almost 200 volatile substances in durian. Lacking, however, was information on which of those make a contribution to the characteristic durian smell. The authors set out to identify the big chemical players in the durian’s odor signature.
In doing so, they pinpointed 41 highly odor-active compounds, 24 of which scientists had not identified in durian before. Among the most prominent were substances associated with fruity, sweet, sulfurous and oniony smells. The oniony smelling odorants belonged to a compound class that had rarely been found in food before. Four of the newly discovered chemical compounds were previously unknown to science.
They should use dogs to test durians from different countries. The smell and tastes differ in Sumatra, Thailand and Malaysia.
Once we stayed in a guesthouse in Sumatra and whenever we cracked open a durian the dog got excited so much he ran in circles and could not be calmed until he got his share of the fruit.
I appreciate his feelings. I had not known durian until age 45. [The tree doesn’t grow in Canada.] But from the first whiff of that beautiful aroma I was hooked. Except for me it’s more like a high.
Does it contain any known or unknown psychogenic components? Are there any components with potential therapeutic properties?