A Cuke Is a Cuke?

Reading some of the reactions of students to some of the food items we used in the bento project was very instructive for me. The negative reactions to some foods were not entirely unexpected, for example, the preserved sardines, complete with heads and eyes, and the konbu (seaweed), tasting fishy like the sea. But what surprised me were some of the reactions to the particular cucumber we used. I had told the class that this was a special cucumber called a Japanese cucumber and, when I balked at the price, Andrea had insisted that no other cucumber would pass muster with her students from Japan. They would have known the difference between a Japanese Cucumber, a Chinese Cucumber, and an English Cucumber. The specific qualities of this cucumber are a thin skin without a bitter taste, few seeds, and an exceptional crunchiness, all qualities I personally find to be absolutely delightful. I was somewhat taken aback, therefore, to discover that a number of my students found it to be unsettling—“unlike any cucumber” they have ever tasted. The Japanese students were not the only discriminating ones! The humble cucumber proved to be a food that could pose the shock of the unfamiliar, a cultural boundary not marked only by its name but by a deeper more visceral response, not so much registered in terms of its taste as in its textural qualities. This raises a question for us about how deeply engrained our culturally conditioned responses to food can be? How is it that a flavor or even a more subtle quality such as texture can be so highly prized by some and experienced as unpleasant or even repugnant by others? I am reminded of Nigel Slater’s account of his family’s first attempt at preparing spaghetti, still an exotic food in 1960s England, and their emphatic rejection of the parmesan cheese they had been instructed to sprinkle on top because they decided that it “tasted like sick?” As we learned from Nadia Seremetakis, culture is not just “in the head” but it is embodied through all the senses.