I’ll read how a cooking oil will become rancid, or the oil in nuts, or the oil in whole-wheat flour. But I never notice. I never find that something has now become disgusting in that way.
(Although I’m not crazy about nuts to begin with, and I’ve never had a fresh one from a tree or anything, so it’s possible I’m reacting to something there.)
How much do you notice rancidity? Do the people around you detect it similarly?
Some discussions online mention rancidity in connection with supertasting, but I strongly suspect I am a supertaster because I have to go very light on most bitter ingredients, cut back on sugar in a recipe so it doesn’t just taste like sugar, find too much fat to be gross, and so on. [Reading about supertasting is such a blend of sadness and vindication. You mean grapefruits are genuinely supposed to taste good? And an avocado all by itself? And raw pineapple? Honestly?]
I read an article once that suggested that rancidity is something you learn to pick up on and that the inclusion of certain preservatives such as hydrogenated oils in US foods means a lot of us have lost the ability to detect rancidity vs people in other countries that don’t use these preservatives and food has a shorter shelf life. It took me a very long time to recognize what rancidity smells like, but now that I do, I can smell it in a large variety of items. I’ve smelled it in dry cereal, corn chips, nuts, oils, etc. sometimes it’s stronger and more obvious and other times it’s faint. It can have a slightly different smell depending on what’s rancid, but that base smell always seems to be the same. Here’s my suggestion, and it may sound weird… Go to a Mexican grocer or local Mexican restaurant and get some tortilla chips that they fry in house. Put them in a paper bag and leave them somewhere and forget about them for a few months. When you open the bag again, you will get the strongest whiff of rancidity you’ve ever experienced. Hopefully you’ll know after that, what to lookout for. I don’t know what it is about fresh tortilla chips, but damn they get rancid in the worst way 🤮