Zimmern: “completely rotten, mushy onions.”
Bourdain: “…Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.”
Alfred Russell Wallace, some naturalist in the 1800’s: “After a fruit-eating bat has pee’d on it.”
Henri Mouhot, French naturalist: “On first tasting it I thought it like the flesh of some animal in a state of putrefaction.”
BBC: “It has been likened to rotting onions, unwashed socks and even carrion in custard, but the most accurate description by far is that of a sewer full of rotting pineapples.”
Richard Sterling, travel/food writer: “… its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.”
Lovely.
