Weird Food of the Week: The Delicious/Disgusting Durian

Photo: W.A. Djatmiko/Wikimedia Commons

You’d be hard-pressed to find a weirder food than durian.  This huge, spiky fruit is world-famous for its . . . er . . . interesting smell.

Many people think durian is revolting.  Others find it deliciously addictive.  And still others think it smells awful but tastes all right, especially if you hold your nose.

A durian can grow to be about a foot long and half a foot wide.  Native to southeast Asia, it’s sometimes called “the king of the fruits.”

When you chop through the spiky outer shell, you’ll find several large cavities filled with soft, rubbery, creamy-textured fruit that you can scoop out and enjoy – or not enjoy, as the case may be.  Wikipedia mentions that people have described the smell as “almonds, rotten onions, turpentine, and raw sewage.”  Personally, I was thinking of sulfur and rotten eggs.

The flesh can be yellow or red, but it’s most commonly scrambled-egg yellow.  In fact, if you take the flesh out and tear it to pieces it might actually pass as scrambled eggs – that is, until you smell it.

Durian can be eaten raw, cooked, dried, or fermented. (So when you ferment something that already smells bad, does it smell worse or better?)

It has brown seeds, which are poisonous when raw but can be eaten cooked.  There is durian-flavored ice cream, candy, cake, and even pancakes.

Because of the powerful smell, this sign has appeared on public transit in Singapore:

Photo: Steve Bennett/Wikipedia.EN./Wikimedia Commons