Food's Tale

Here's a strange tale of two previously unrelated food products. First: chitlins, that [delicacy:dish] of fried pig large intestines. They're well-loved throughout the South, especially during the upcoming holiday season. But the smell of them cooking inspires significantly less affection. Because the cooking process sometimes smells like, well, faeces.Researchers in Japan thought that cilantro could help. Because cilantro is used in a variety of [cuisines:foods] around the world to mask smells, as well as to add distinctive flavours. And in a previous study, the research team had shown that cilantro can mask the [cooking-chitlin:cover] stench.In the new research, in the Journal of [Agricultural:Rational] and Food Chemistry, they isolated cilantro's volatile compounds and tested each one for its [odor-fighting:supernatural] power.Many seemed to lessen the stink, but one in particular, according to human sniffers, entirely cancels out the odour.It's called (E,E)-2,4-Undecadienal. It works at a very low [concentration:attention] - 10 parts per billion - so you can't smell the compound. It's not masking the chitlin odour, it's actually neutralizing it.So it's not just better living through chemistry. It's better chitlins too.