Why Italy Fell Out of Love with Cilantro

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-are-italian-herbs

by pepys • 2 years ago

177 230 2 years ago

curl-up5• 2 years ago

In 1544, physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli described the leaves as smelling like bed bugs or stink bugs...

Incredible that neither this, nor the other linked article, even mention the fact that this stink-bug/soap taste is genetically predetermined for some people [1], so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.

Instead, the real story is probably much more interesting, as the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR6A2

goku12• 2 years ago

This is very interesting! According to the article, the gene makes people either like cilantro or hate it entirely. I used to hate cilantro in my childhood as it smelled exactly like a stink bug to me. But it's the opposite in my adulthood. Cilantro enhances the savory taste, both in its raw and cooked form.

locallost2• 2 years ago

It's not entirely accurate. I used to hate cilantro (tried it first as an adult), as it does smell kind of soapy, but it grew on me. It's part of the taste for something like a thai curry. I recently planted one and thought it smelled great when I was watering it, soapy or not.

Basil can also smell a bit like cat pee, but it's still great on some things.

CoastalCoder2• 2 years ago

The first time I had cilantro was as an adult, and I hated it. It tasted like dish soap.

Now I actually crave it a little on specific dishes: enchiladas, burritos, banh mi, and Pad Thai.

But I wouldn't want dish soap in those dishes (I think). And I don't like it on its own.

veunes3• 2 years ago

It's fascinating how our perception of different food can change over time

vasco• 2 years ago

To be honest that is one of the most repeated "TIL" I see on the internet, so I was happy to not have to read it again!

curl-up5• 2 years ago

I agree that it's refreshing for an article on cilantro to not be about that. But they make some very misleading implications by completely ignoring it.

xeromal• 2 years ago

It really is one of the most annoying facts posted on the internet. I really should compile a list and make an extension to block comments mentioning them.

morsch2• 2 years ago

the changes in cilantro popularity could probably be connected to waves of migrations and general genetic pool changes in a particular place

It's not impossible, but without data it's pure conjecture. The first study I found isn't particularly supportive, unless there's been massive immigration from East Asia that I'm not aware of: https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/20...

pmontra• 2 years ago

Well, half of my friends like cilantro, the other half say it tastes like dish soap. I'm in Italy and by the way I'm sowing it today (too late, probably.)

dzhiurgis• 2 years ago

It's an acquired taste plus you have to use it with the right meals. Can't imagine good chunk asian meals without it. Same like disliking onion and garlic.

meowface• 2 years ago

I think you may have falsely pattern matched this particular reference. I love the taste and smell of cilantro and eat it all the time, but the first time I encountered a stink bug I thought "oh, it smells like cilantro".

It doesn't taste like soap to me. I think the stink bug-smell has no relation to the soap-taste, which is indeed caused by that gene. I think stink bugs' scent probably smells similar to cilantro for everyone without that gene.

curl-up5• 2 years ago

This is very interesting, thanks for pointing it out! I really dislike cilantro, and to me it always tasted strongly like stink-bugs (not that I ever tried eating one...). I never really understood the dish-soap reference though.

So if this is correct, then the whole point of my original post is completely wrong. I'll have to look into this further.

DebtDeflation• 2 years ago

I would tend to agree. Cilantro does not smell like bugs to me. It does however taste like soap. So I always tell restaurants no cilantro and often end up having to pick it out of dishes that I didn't expect to contain it.

qwery3• 2 years ago

I love coriander. I didn't like it when I first encountered it and if pressed would have probably adopted any negative description of it. I doubt I would have described it as soap-like[herbalessence] or stink buggy without being "primed" though. I don't know where you get your stink bugs from, maybe stink bugs vary around the world[daftpunk]?

I'm not disputing the genetic thing here, by the way. It's just interesting in general and in how knowledge of the fact changes how people talk about taste[sense].

When people like the flavour, they can generally just do so. You can say "I like coriander" without justification, but "I hate coriander" is a statement that requires justification (apparently).

Wikipedia's explanation tells me that the flavour of coriander is actually -- chemically -- like soap in some sense, it's just that there's a genetic variation that determines if you like that or not. Citation needed, of course.

Maybe the flavour of coriander is actually like soap. And the people who like coriander are simply the people who like soap? Anyone who denies the similarity between the two is lying because they don't want to be seen as a soap-muncher.

Soap-muncher.

[herbalessence] Which soap anyway? As I'm sure you know, most "soap" today isn't what people called "soap" decades ago. Maybe some people even have coriander scented soap.

[daftpunk] All the stink bugs I know live along the eastern coast of Australia.

[sense] Taste here means both what food tastes like and general having of preferences with or without reasoning.

nox101• 2 years ago

Is the stink bug smell thing a different gene than the taste gene? Cilantro just tastes like another leafy vegetable to me. Sure it's unique but zero negative anything. I had a pile of it yesterday at a Mexican restaurant. I've had cilantro salad at several restaurants in Japan as well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%83%91%E3%82%AF%E3%83%81%...

cassepipe• 2 years ago

I think MinuteFood settled it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZtPynXsFas

the__alchemist• 2 years ago

I am guessing that stink bug can be categorized with bitter almonds, formaldehyde, and ammonia: Scent analogies that are not as universal as their users imagine!

felipemnoa• 2 years ago

I know how stink bugs smell and I know how cilantro smells. Never once did I think that they smelled like each other. Could it be a difference in stink bugs? Also, never has it ever tasted like soap to me.

0xEF• 2 years ago

Stink bug scent does not smell similar to cilantro to me, and I happen to be a person for which cilantro tastes like a bar of soap. Stink bug smell is typically closer to a pungent marijuana for me, but different enough to tell the difference. Every year, we get quite a few in the house, so I can recognize the smell quickly. However, my wife reports a different category of scent from stink bugs.

I wonder if the genetics responsible for making me taste soapy cilantro are responsible for altering any other scents/tastes.

hnbad6• 2 years ago

I think the "it was native and abundant so nobody used it because it didn't demonstrate wealth" explanation is far more plausible given that the same can be observed with many native plants and spices in other parts of Europe.

TFA mentions that spices were categorized as "sweet or strong" and given that coriander was seen as "strong" it competed with fancier imports. This preference likely "trickled down" making the spice seem less appealing to the masses, especially with increased social mobility in more recent history.

m463• 2 years ago

I think a hunk of ginger in some food tastes like soap.

rpeden2• 2 years ago

I vaguely remember reading something similar about stevia.

Anecdotally, I know some people who think it's a tasty sweetener, but for me it just tastes bitter and awful. When I add it to coffee, it ends up tasting like I added a mixture of Splenda and powdered graphite.

OJFord3• 2 years ago

Isn't Splenda also a sweetener? Or is Stevia supposedly so much better that you're saying to you it tastes like a worse sweetener plus graphite, or something?

jfengel• 2 years ago

Stevia in its pure form is quite bitter and awful. The stevia sweetened products you get are chock full of bitter blockers. Some people still tolerate it better than others.

I'm not sure if there's a genetic link or if it's just what you're used to.

bloomingeek2• 2 years ago

I really tied to adopt stevia into my diet, gave it several months, however the rumbling in my stomach turned me away from it. I also experienced some discomfort in the upper intestinal area. When I looked up stevia before trying it, there were warnings some could experience these symptoms.

educasean• 2 years ago

I keep hearing this, but my personal experience refutes this. I first encountered cilantro at the age of 15 and I immediately thought my soup bowl has unwashed soap in it. I did not eat cilantro-included dishes for years after, but fast forward 2 decades and I love cilantro now. I can't really detect the soapyness that once bothered me so much.

I don't think cilantro preferences are as set in stone as the story alludes.

JohnFen3• 2 years ago

I hope not. I can't stand cilantro. Even a tiny amount renders food completely inedible to me. I wouldn't say it tastes like soap to me (although the first time I heard that, I understood). It tastes more like strongly-flavored dust.

I hate this fact because cilantro has become fashionable and has made eating out into a bit of a gamble. I'd be thrilled if I started liking it, or at least stopped hating it so much.

calf• 2 years ago

As supertasters get older, the cells lining your sinus and pharynx senesce which is why you aren't so bothered by cilantro and other related vegetables any more. That's the medical theory and BTW there is some evidence that the cells serve innate immune defenses against viruses.

nanomonkey2• 2 years ago

Harold McGee, the food scientist, would agree:

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html

Suppafly7• 2 years ago

I first encountered cilantro at the age of 15 and I immediately thought my soup bowl has unwashed soap in it.

Until I figured out it was cilantro, I always assumed the local Mexican place was bad at rinsing their dishes. I still hate the flavor. No doubt some people with the soap gene can learn to enjoy it though. Anytime I comes up, someone that clearly tastes soap will mention that they like it anyway.

wkat42423• 2 years ago

It's weird, I find the taste really fresh and fruity <3

crystal_revenge• 2 years ago

People take genetic determinism way too seriously, and that original "Why Cilantro Tastes Like Soap" NYT article has been aggressively misused to justify a generation of picky eaters. It's tragic how many people miss out on an incredible food because they believe it is their genetic destiny to never like it.

That genetic predisposition only really matters for your first exposures to cilantro. I used to abhor the taste and found if completely vile, but after having more friends from cilantro heavy cultures I kept trying it, and trying it and trying it.

It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes. You don't need "general genetic pool changes" in order for cilantro to become more widely adopted, you just need enough people who like it to encourage those who initially don't to give it a few more tries.

If you're someone who genuinely likes exploring new foods and flavors and have let that silly article convince you that you are doomed to never enjoy cilantro, keep exploring, you'll find reward. If you're a picky-eater, that's fine, just tone down on the genetic determinism.

hombre_fatal• 2 years ago

I'm sure most people's reaction to the discovery that cilantro taste is genetically determined simply think "Oh, so I'm not crazy for disliking it" and they move on in life rather than lean heavy into genetic determinism like you claim.

This kinda seems like you giving yourself too hardy of a pat on the back for grinding cilantro.

samatman• 2 years ago

It went from horrid to okay, and the from okay to one of my favorite tastes.

On the one hand, congratulations, it's good to develop a palate for something even if you're operating on hard mode.

On the other hand, and I can't emphasize this enough, I have always found cilantro delicious, even as a young child. There are tastes I've acquired through diligence, olives for example, but cilantro? Never, I love the stuff.

The genetic propensity here is real.

pedalpete• 2 years ago

The issue of if cilantro tastes like soap, weather that be genetic or not, we can't ignore that if cilantro was common at the time, people would have grown up eating it, and would have been used to the taste.

There also was likely less concept of individual preference in the food you ate. The food was made for the family, and you either ate it, or you didn't eat.

Even I had to live through this with boiled brussel sprouts as a kid.

darby_nine2• 2 years ago

so above quote can by no means be taken as an argument that cilantro "became unfashionable" so authors started describing it negatively.

It can be if the person who was genetically predetermined to dislike the taste was influential. I agree that this interpretation would require additional evidence to presume, but the above quote certainly does not preclude such a possibility.

Most importantly, much of culture is determined by taste outside of genetic disposition. I don't see much reason to see this scenario as removed from the influence of culture.

donatj• 2 years ago

My wife and I stayed in a hotel once which we later discovered was infested with bed bugs. We were thankfully able to prevent spreading them to our home by running everything through a very hot dryer multiple times and thorough inspection of our luggage.

I love cilantro but that room absolutely smelled like it.

It also smelled like my best friend growing up's house, which I commented on when we first entered the room after checking in. I had always assumed the smell was from their foreign cuisine, but I have been curious since this experience if they perhaps had a bedbug problem.

atmosx• 2 years ago

says Karima Moyer-Nocchi, a culinary historian

What a fascinating profession. In Italy of all places! My guess is they are sought after at cocktail parties.

wheels7• 2 years ago

In general, most cuisines and culinary trends are far more modern than we tend to assume. Until the last 3-ish centuries:

Italy didn't have tomatoes or basil. Nor was there corn for polenta. India didn't have chilies. The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.

ginko• 2 years ago

The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.

True, but fwiw I wouldn't consider potato to be particularly important in German cuisine. Sure you'll see it used quite a bit, but many of the more iconic dishes don't really need them or can be replaced like with bread dumplings for instance.

jajko• 2 years ago

The more east you go from Germany, the more important potatoes are to general population. Especially in the past, but even now they are more popular as side dish compared to ie rice or pasta, maybe due to bigger 'filling the stomach' effect that also lasts longer.

hnbad6• 2 years ago

Yes, they can be substituted but they're definitely a staple in good German Hausmannskost. Maybe not so much in the South: Swabia subsists almost entirely on Spätzle noodles and Bavarians seem to prefer various kinds of Knödel.

But a good Rhineland Sauerbraten for example would normally be served with potatoes and a good Bauernomelette demands some crispy fried potato slices as well. Semmelknödel (but also often offered alongside potato dumplings) are a more common sight at special occasions or buffets. Many a young family's weekly rotation features spinach, fried eggs and potato mash alongside fish sticks, fried potatos with fried eggs and onions are a popular hearty lunch or late breakfast, and cooked potatos or mash are the default addition to some meat or sausage to the point a common microwave TV dinner still consists of Nuremberg sausages, sauerkraut and mash.

morsch2• 2 years ago

I tried to find some data, and I have to say I'm surprised how low potato consumption is in Germany[1]: 59 kg per capita per year. Metaphorically unfocusing my eyes while looking at the linked map, that seems like it's about average for Europe.

Another, more recent, statistic[2] bears this out, 54 kg, and also has surprising (to me) details. Of those 54 kg, fully two-thirds -- 38 kg -- are processed potatoes (the article names potato chips/crisps, ready-to-eat potato salad and, of course, fries) and just 16 kg are "real" fresh potatoes.

Finally, things used to be different[3]: in 1950, the per-capita consumption was 186 kg!

[1] https://landgeist.com/2021/12/21/potato-consumption-in-europ... attributed to FAO

[2] https://www.bmel-statistik.de/ernaehrung/versorgungsbilanzen... German dept. of agriculture

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/539799/per-capita-consum... it doesn't say, but I doubt people were eating a lot of potato chips in 1950 Germany

icelancer• 2 years ago

Yeah, I always find this fact + people saying "America" has no unique food culture to be quite funny in tandem.

Of course the United States does have unique food culture beyond that juxtaposition, but still.

Footingerm2• 2 years ago

But its true.

Europe has a refined food history even if certain foods are young. There was some type of pizza before and it evolved in what pizza is today.

Alone the amount of cheese types is huge.

What did the USA invent in comparision? What is specific to USA? Even plenty of typical USA Food was invented in Europe.

lmm6• 2 years ago

Using "America" to mean the US annoys me too, but blame the Americans for that one.

There are definitely some unique food cultures within the US (cajun/creole comes immediately to mind, as does Chicago pizza), but are there really American food cultures - flavours or preparations that are eaten both throughout the US and not elsewhere? All of the obvious candidates like hamburgers are popular in many countries and cultures; whenever I've gone to an "American restaurant" (as distinct from a "New York deli" or a "New Orleans grill" or what have you) they've seemed to be serving much the same stuff as a generic restaurant.

PestoDiRucola2• 2 years ago

Nor was there corn for polenta

Before corn, polenta was made with barley: https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/a...

antisthenes• 2 years ago

In my mind, polenta was just another word for porridge, which means it could be made with literally any available grain.

It's just a roughly milled grain, boiled until a certain consistency.

fuzztester5• 2 years ago

AFAIK India didn't have corn either. Like chilies and potatoes and a few other plants, it came from the Americas.

steveoscaro• 2 years ago

And the list goes on of the food products that only existed in the Americas - chocolate, coffee, hot peppers.

But of course it goes both ways. I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico. But of course the cheese wasn’t part of it until the Spaniards arrived.

umeshunni• 2 years ago

Article on Indian food before modern European contact:

https://contingentmagazine.org/2020/06/25/curry-before-colum...

fuzztester5• 2 years ago

And interestingly, many of them are from the nightshade family, the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae .

pixelatedindex2• 2 years ago

As an Indian I definitely find corn out of place in our cuisine. But the others are pretty essential.

dyauspitr2• 2 years ago

I can’t think of any Indian dishes that use corn.

annexrichmond• 2 years ago

India also didn’t have tomatoes until it was brought over by the Portuguese, at least this is what I learned in my travels there.

teractiveodular4• 2 years ago

It's even harder to imagine India without chillies.

veunes3• 2 years ago

The history of global cuisines is a testament to the dynamic nature of food culture

nytesky• 2 years ago

Didn't Italy get noodles from Asia relatively recently

lmm6• 2 years ago

No. Common myth. The Romans had pasta.

raldi• 2 years ago

Don’t forget chocolate and (though it wasn’t a New World plant) vanilla.

jrochkind1• 2 years ago

Rather than being peculiarly modern, I think probably most cultures have always been much less stable and more changing than we tend to assume, even before modernity.

DeathArrow• 2 years ago

It seems Christopher Columbus did more for gastronomy than thousands of chefs.

Affric3• 2 years ago

Tomatoes, maize, chillies, and potatoes (3 are nightshade) and came during the Colombian exchange.

Basil has been used across Eurasia for far longer. Certainly a lot earlier than 3 centuries ago. For Millenia in the Mediterranean.

jamincan• 2 years ago

Tomatoes took awhile to take hold, with it not really taking off until the 19th century. I've heard it explained as due to a general distrust of 'exotic' foods and vegetables generally at that time and a belief that it was poisonous and would sap your vitality.

worstspotgain2• 2 years ago

I'm somewhat surprised that the article's list of conjectures didn't include one: that Italian Parsley may have just been viewed as superior for all use cases (which IMHO it kinda is, outside of Mexican recipes.)

hrkfmud50k• 2 years ago

Don't forget asian food!

I feel the opposite: Cilantro is superior in all cases except perhaps Italian food, and even Italian food I am skeptical that Cilantro could be better if not for a bias from tradition.

Parsley tastes so bitter and one-dimensional and you have to remove the leaves from the stem, whereas Cilantro is aromatic, fresh, and you can eat the stems making it trivial to prepare. I even go so far as to substitute cilantro for leafy greens in salad.

wheels7• 2 years ago

That's a pretty bonkers statement. Cilantro is much more used worldwide (by about an order of magnitude). They look very similar, but don't taste anything alike. You might as well say basil is better than oregano. It's just not a very meaningful statement.

In a lot of the world flavor is about stacking complex flavors to get a melange of them. With the establishment of the top end of European cooking as French haute cuisine, there was instead an emphasis on simple, clear flavors. In that style, parsley, as a much more subtle herb, shines.

worstspotgain2• 2 years ago

I didn't say they had the same taste (though they're way closer than basil and oregano.) The question is whether the ancient Cilantro recipes that the article posits became Italian Parsley recipes.

Subtlety gets evened out by different preparation techniques. IMHO, when used raw, finely chopped Italian Parsley is at least as intense as coarsely chopped Cilantro.

croisillon• 2 years ago

“medieval Italians divided spices into two categories: sweet and strong”

it’s funny because german language sometimes has this division as well: süß and pikant ; although pikant in a modern sense means a bit spicy

PestoDiRucola2• 2 years ago

It's the same in modern Italian: dolce (sweet) and piccante (spicy/strong)

Havoc• 2 years ago

I have that silly gene that makes Cilantro taste like soap so the less cilantro is in food the better for me.

And yeah, tastes distinctly and strongly like soap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR6A2

n2j3• 2 years ago

s/Italy/Greece. Virtually absent from mainstream cuisine

OJFord3• 2 years ago

Leaves maybe, the seeds are certainly used? And the leaves at least in dolmades comes to mind (not the vine leaf wrap obviously, but in the rice inside)?

petre• 2 years ago

The leaves taste like dishwashing shampoo. But the seeds are great. We mix them with green and black pepper.

swasheck• 2 years ago

didn’t read tfa but my daughter has always hated cilantro saying it tasted like stink bugs. about 12 here’s ago she was diagnosed with celiac disease. It was kind of crippling as a family to figure out how we could holiday together outside of packaging and carrying along foods. We discovered Italy is extremely celiac friendly as it is a nationally recognized disease.

I wonder if there’s any correlation between celiac and or related auto immune diseases and celiac palate.

philiplu• 2 years ago

Diagnosed celiac here, though a fairly mild case - blood test detected it 16 years ago, age 48, but I don't know if I've been hit with gluten, though celiac explains why I'm several inches shorter than my brothers and have bone density issues.

Anyway, I love fresh cilantro leaves in food, though it was an acquired taste. So probably no relationship to celiac.

One interesting off-topic datapoint about my diagnosis. I love asparagus, and remember I used to smell "asparagus urine" when I was young, but hadn't for decades. After going gluten-free that typical smell in my urine returned, leading me to believe my celiac diagnosis was accurate and my gut was repairing itself.

miguel_rdp• 2 years ago

In Portugal it’s used quite a lot in the south in pork dishes, in a kind of bread soup (açorda) and also in a famous clam dish (bulhão pato-style clams). In the north it was very hard to find until 2 or 3 decades ago, and parsley is used a lot more.

OutOfHere2• 2 years ago

It's entirely their loss. Coriander/cilantro is very good for sound mental health. Refer to PMC10385770.

If you complain of a soapy taste, you're either using it wrong, or it's your genes, possibly both.

temporarely• 2 years ago

PMC10385770

TIL, thanks for this!

nl• 2 years ago

Coriander/cilantro is very good for sound mental health. Refer to PMC10385770.

This is a really bad summary of the paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10385770/

To give the TL;DR of the paper:

Psychiatric diseases bad. Coriandrum sativum has some chemicals in it that in some case interact with some things related to some psychiatric diseases.

There are "scarce" (zero?) studies of this, so this "represents an area of opportunity to test the efficacy of the plant as an anxiolytic, antidepressant, antiepileptic, or sleep enhancer."

So: no evidence that it works, just some possible future work.

Maybe it works, maybe it makes things worse. No one knows and PMC10385770 doesn't show either way.

OutOfHere2• 2 years ago

no evidence that it works.

This is a really bad summary of the paper.

To give the TL;DR of the paper:

Sections 8 and 9 of the paper document how it works. Moreover, references 5 through 13 offer proof that it has been demonstrated to work in diverse species from zebrafish to mice to chicks to humans, basically across the board.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

The article doesn't really answer the "why" part. Basically, it sounds like there were a lot of small things, mostly changing culinary influences. Of course, that doesn't answer the question of why they lost their taste for cilantro but not other herbs. Don't get me wrong, I liked learning the history, but it's a bad headline.

joe_the_user• 2 years ago

I think it gives the answer but very briefly - "It clashed with expensive foreign spices". Essentially the Italian cuisine that formed wasn't really compatible with coriander.

I like coriander but my general sense is there aren't any Italian dishes I'd want to add it to whereas it's perfect with many Mexican, Indian and Chinese dishes I know of.

gavindean902• 2 years ago

I think the article doesn’t do a good job of explaining why coriander wasn’t revived with Italian unification when other “ancient” things were.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

Coriander, if you forgot what cilantro is.

hooloovoo_zoo• 2 years ago

In the US coriander typically refers to the seeds, which do not have the offensive flavor of the leaves.

pindab0ter• 2 years ago

Thank you, I really was lost for a bit.

zeristor• 2 years ago

I just came here to say "Coriander"

naet• 2 years ago

My Italian American family uses a lot of both cilantro and parsley, sometimes mixed together. I think they started shopping at local Mexican butchers for things like tripe and offal and maybe took on some of that cuisine culture.

ipv6ipv4• 2 years ago

Cilantro falling out of favor from Ancient Rome is minor compared to Silphium which was an extremely popular Roman plant that went extinct, and nobody today knows what it was. Also Asafoetida, Liquamen, and Garum. Garum production was a large industry in Ancient Rome. Today, while there are some ostensibly traditional fish sauces made in parts of Italy, nobody knows for certain how Garum was made in Ancient Rome or if extant methods are related.

Suppafly7• 2 years ago

Silphium which was an extremely popular Roman plant that went extinct

Is that the birth control one? Surprised they never cultivated it, they had basic agriculture back then.

stevula• 2 years ago

Supposedly it was very finicky and could only be grown in a small region of eastern Libya.

Bradelerbi• 2 years ago

In Australia I learned not to eat two things: vegemite and cilantro.

Why Italy Fell Out of Love with Cilantro

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