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It Tastes Like Feet

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"It tastes exactly like licking a shag carpet!"
Harris K. Telemacher, L.A. Story

For some reason, people tend to describe foods that taste terrible in terms of things that no sane person has any right to know the taste of.

The name comes from the episode of Friends where Rachel accidentally combines an English Trifle and a Shepherd's Pie, making the world's first (and hopefully last) Shepherd's Trifle. Meat, onions, whipped cream and jam? And how would Ross know what feet taste like? A sister trope to Lethal Chef.

In Real Life, some examples of this trope are physiologically justifiable. On its own, the tongue is only capable of detecting a few basic tastes - salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and savory. The more subtle and complex flavors associated with foods are actually due to the sense of smell, as aromatic molecules travel from the mouth up into the nasal cavity from behind. Thus, the smell of a non-food item can often be considered a reasonable guess as to its flavor. Of course, this only works for concrete examples of the trope ("this tastes like shit"), as opposed to more abstract/metaphorical uses ("this tastes like death").

Contrast with Tastes Like Chicken. Not to be confused with an instance of someone actually tasting a foot. Or metaphorically tasting their foot. If someone is really eating a foot, then the trope might be I Ate WHAT?!, with a side order of Agony of the Feet for the person getting their feet eaten.

See also Tastes Like Purple, for things it shouldn't even be possible to taste. May or may not be invoked after consuming Foreign Queasine or A Tankard of Moose Urine. Sommelier Speak is an unusual case: even good wine is likely to be compared to something inedible. Most people expect a Mess on a Plate to taste like this.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • According to Crayon Shin-chan, green peppers taste like crotch.
  • Doraemon: In the American English version of "Big G: Master Chef", Sneech mentions that Big G's food tastes like feet as he is eating it.
  • In an early chapter of Gintama, Gin puts some of everything in the fridge into their nabe. When Big Eater Kagura tries it, she comments, "It tastes like Gin-chan's feet." Promptly lampshaded by Gin.
  • The English dub of Hetalia: Axis Powers features America telling England that his scones taste like "petrified couch stuffing".
  • In Moyashimon, Tadayasu describes the taste of hongeohoe (stingray sashimi that's been fermented in the ray's own urea and digestive juices) like this: "You know how at campsites, the filthy cramped men's bathroom just has one long urinal trough? I feel like I just picked up a piece of toilet paper that's been stewing in there for a few weeks and put it in my mouth."
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • In an infamous episode (see Lethal Chef), James describes May's culinary disaster:
      James: "It has a hint of...how you say...jet fuel. With ze aftertaste of burning tortoise. And for some reason, I can't swallow it."
    • Inverted with Dawn's mom's Poffin recipe for her Glameow, the Meowth of Team Rocket likes it — and both are cat-based Pokemon.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, after Kaneki is turned into a ghoul, he describes human food (which tastes horrible to ghouls) like this, comparing the taste of miso soup and bread to gasoline and sponges.

    Asian Animation 

    Comedy 
  • Lewis Black describes red and green NyQuil as the only things in the world that taste like red and green.
  • Dave Chappelle has described grape "drink" (not to be confused with grape juice) as consisting of "sugar, water, and of course purple."
  • After someone described the taste of Vegemite as "like licking a cat's ass," comic Billy Connolly asked, "How does she know?"
  • Original flavor NyQuil: Let Denis Leary explain:
    I love NyQuil, man. Because NyQuil has never changed, man. It's never changed. All the other medicines are doing that inner-child thing. "We know that there’s a small child inside of you, so now we have grape and cherry and orange flavor." Not NyQuil! They still have the original green death fucking flavor! You know why!? Because it doesn't matter what it tastes like! It's so strong you go, wheeze "Hey this stuff really tastes like.." Bang! Yer in the coma already!
  • In the "Australian Table Wine" sketch on the Monty Python album Monty Python's Previous Record, Eric Idle describes an Australian wine, Nuits St Wogga Wogga, as "having a bouquet like an Aborigine's armpit".
  • Dylan Moran once gave a summary of the consistency of a particular wine as follows: "Moccasins... denture fixture fluid... it's extraordinary. Lovely for when you're being chased by the Stasi. In a railway tunnel. Going to meet The Monk."
    • That was more of a mockery of professional wine tasters - there being in his own opinion "two kinds of wine - wine that makes you go 'Mmm, that's okay, can we have eight of those? Give us eight of those!' and another one that makes you go 'Arrrrgh Jesus, what is that?!'"
      • "...and occasionally, you get a subtle one, that makes you go 'Urk! Ack! Hmm, that's quite all right!'"
  • Jim Norton, on the apparently metallic taste of a certain bodily fluid: "It tastes like I drank the bad guy from Terminator 2".
  • Nick Swardson said, at one point, that he wants to be very difficult when he's an old man, and as an example said that he would complain about restaurant food, specifically, sending it back while complaining that it tastes like "wolf pussy."

    Comic Books 
  • In Astro City, Energy Being Astra Furst says her specially-prepared synthetic breakfast tastes "manganese-flavor," after her mother tells her it is supposed to be grape-flavor. Still, if anyone is going to know what manganese tastes like, it's probably Astra.
  • Preacher:
    • There is a scene in which an FBI agent is offered more coffee by a local sheriff. He refuses, stating that it tastes like someone came in it. The sheriff makes a sarcastic remark about how he couldn't control himself, rather than wondering how the agent recognizes the taste.
    • Jesse laments his lack of gravy with a meal:
    Cassidy: "That stuff they make from bacon grease? It tastes like fucking semen!"
    * pause*
    Cassidy: "...or so I'd assume."
  • In She-Hulk, She-hulk has offered Valkyrie (from The Defenders) a light beer. Val's reaction after a swig? "It tastes like my horse crawled into my mouth and died." It doesn't stop her from asking for "more of this swill" later, though.
  • In one Spider-Man comic, Peter and Mary Jane are having a quick lunch on the set of MJ's soap opera, and after taking a bite of his hot dog — from the studio commissary — Peter is a little nauseated, claiming his "mouth feels like someone who licked the inside of Magic Johnson's sneaker".
  • In an episode of Suske en Wiske, two smoking Mooks are guarding a building when Wiske lights a fire to distract them, prompting one mook to ask the other, "Hey, what are you smoking, your mattress?"
  • In one of the UglyDolls comics, Tray brings special berries home from a trip that trick taste buds into non-food items tasting like foods when licked, and vice versa. Before testing the non-food items, Wage complains that popcorn "tastes like a telephone pole", while Babo's cookie "tastes like a hubcap".

    Comic Strips 
  • From Garfield:
    Jon: Irma, Is this tea or coffee?
    Irma: What does it taste like?
    Jon: It tastes like turpentine!
    Irma: Oh, that's our coffee. Our tea tastes like transmission fluid.
  • Played for laughs in Sturmtruppen: at one point two soldiers are eating the camp's food and one of them compares its taste to boiled truck tires. His colleague wholeheartedly agrees... and not only keeps eating with gusto but also asks if he can finish his part too. Turns out he likes boiled truck tires.
  • From Zits:
    Pierce: When I burp, it tastes exactly like caterpillars.
    D'ijon: I don't even want to know how you know that.
    • In another strip, Jeremy describes wheatgrass juice as tasting "like licking the underside of an old John Deere riding lawnmower!"
    • According to Pierce, if you dip Salisbury steak in pudding it tastes just like squirrel.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Lilo & Stitch fanfic Alpha and Omega, this is 419's description of the food the cafeteria serves:
    What touched my palette was a taste that I could only describe as being similar to that of beetroot covered in earwax, with chunks of tarmac thrown in for good measure. With a scrunched up face, I struggled to swallow the concoction down – my throat seemed to be trying its best to utterly reject the whatever-it-was that I knew I had to digest.
  • The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Funkmeister," Mittens says French cheese smells like feet.
  • Discworld fanfic Clowning is a Serious Business has this dialogue between Assassins Joan Sanderson-Reeves and Miss Alice Band. Joan has just finished demonstrating a fire-breathing act.
    Joan stroked her dog behind the ear and asked if there was any water available.
    "The inside of my mouth tastes like a wretched gnoll's loincloth." she explained, taking a deep appreciative swig.
    "I didn't realise you'd ever eaten one." Alice said, thoughtfully.
  • In the My Little Pony fanfic Fanfic Is Crapsack, the main six have tracked down the lair of the villain who is screwing up Equestria:
    "Oh, man, it smells like the locker room at Flight Camp," Rainbow Dash said. "You never forget that smell, no matter how hard you try..."
    Fluttershy was covering her face with her wing. "Um, sort of," she said. "I mean, this is like that.... only... ugh, worse."
    "Like— spoiled food and dirty socks," Twilight added.
    "Gangrene and stomach gas," Fluttershy, the group veterinarian, chimed in.
    "Pigsty and rancid milk," Applejack contributed.
    "With a twist of despair and an aperitif of nihilistic self-loathing," Rarity added ominously. The others looked at her. "I stood downwind of an art critic once," she explained.
  • Harry Potter fanfiction:
    • In DragonKin Dumbledore faints and needs a restorative potion.
      Snape: Just sip this, Headmaster. You'll be fine in a moment.
      Dumbledore: Hm, old socks and hair tonic, my favorite.
    • Thirty Hs:
      "How does Ronnie Ron taste, master?" Harry spat out an eyeball. "Like some kid with eyes."
    • In Witch Wizard Gnome! Remus gives Sirius a sobering potion with pain relief mixed in.
    Sirius: Bloody hell! It tastes like Snivellus's shorts.
    Remus: Do I want to know?
    • In You Broke Him, You Fix Him Harry needs several potions.
      Harry: What was in that Madame Pomfrey? It tastes like Dudley's used gym socks mixed with cauldron sludge!
  • The Legend of Zelda: Paradise Calling:
    Malon: I've seen what alcohol did to my father after my mother died. I've seen what it does to Ingo. I'd rather not go down that path if I can help it. (beat) That, and I think it tastes like horse piss.
    Link: Been drinking a lot of that lately?
  • In Lovehammer Inc, Horus compares Serenity's biscuits with a "wet cat's backside" here.
  • In Mister Asterisk's Neon Genesis Evangelion The Abridged Series, when the entry plug of EVA 001 fills with LCL Shinji comments that it tastes like primordial soup, subverted since LCL is primordial soup but as with this trope Shinji would have no reason to know what that tasted like.
  • Peace Forged in Fire: According to Tovan tr'Khev, the ale at the Klingon bar where he meets Morgan "tastes like a mugato (FYI: a horned alien gorilla) peed in battery acid."
  • Rainbow Dash complains that the health poultices "tastes like "bleagh" in the Dragon Age: Origins/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover Pony Age Origins. (Twilight points out that poultices are meant to be applied to wounds rather than drank.)
  • In the Pony POV Series Dark World, a slightly serious example occurs when Discord describes his brother Destruction (who he ate at the end of the Alicorn/Draconequi War) as 'tasting like Hiroshima.'
  • Project Sunflower (a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic): While drinking "a restorative brew, of zebra origins", Celestia comments that it smells wonderful, but "tastes rather like a camel's backside".
    Luna: I'm surprised you'd know what that tastes like, Celestia.
    Celestia: I've experienced many strange things over the centuries.
    Luna: [eyes widen]
    Celestia: I'm joking, of course!
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: Ether, which occurs in nature as a plant, apparently tastes disgusting. After having to down a few leaves, Lyra Heartstrings starts noshing on the nearest plants she can grab (conveniently, she's in a forest at the time), and yells that the ether "tastes like flank".
  • In Megami33's Sailor Moon Abridged, when Serena gets some of Darian's blood on her hand, she thinks it's ketchup and licks it saying "This tastes like pennies." Serena, is there anything you won't eat?
    • Blood does taste rusty, and pennies smell rusty, so it's an understandable assumption.
    • People have also misheard the line as, "This tastes like panties," which is more logical, though simultaneously more terrifying.
  • In the Rebuild of Evangelion/Captain America crossover Superwomen of Eva: American Dream, Mari has some Meals Ready to Eat over on the "American Dream". One Omake showcases a possible scene where some SHIELD maintenance personnel say they loaded up MREs that were expired by the time of Second Impact on the Dream's galley as payback for Mari kicking their asses during her training.
  • True to his appearance in Super Mario RPG, Belome does this after licking people in You Got HaruhiRolled!. Highlights include Fujiwara tasting like "burnt asshole".
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The Abridged Series has one episode where Jaden bites into a sandwich...
    Syrus: How was it?
    Jaden: It tastes like Alexis's stupidity!
    Syrus: That rich, huh?

    Film — Animated 
  • Antz:
    Ladybug: This tastes just like crap.
    Beetle: Really? Let me try some. Hey, it is crap. Not bad.
  • Brave: Believing that Merida baked the enchanted cake, Elinor tries to be polite about how it tastes, describing it as "tart" ...and then "gamey". There's something wrong with any cake described as "gamey"...

    Film — Live-Action 
  • ABCs of Death 2: In "G is for Granddad", the grandson insults his grandfather's cognac by saying "I've had wee-wees that tasted better than this".
  • Anchorman: "It smells like Bigfoot's dick!"
  • The morning after the Binge Montage in The Art of the Steal, a hungover Francie says:
    I, I taste an ashtray and battery acid and, like, stripper perfume.
  • The taste of dung is occasionally described as 'nutty' for whatever reason, such as in this example from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me:
    Austin: Basil, this coffee smells like shit.
    Basil: It is shit, Austin.
    Austin: Oh, good then, it's not just me.
    [Drinks]
    Austin: It's a bit nutty.
  • Clerks II: "Hey Silent Bob, does this shit taste like piss and flies to you too?" Subverted, in that their burger actually is covered in urine and dead flies, note  though neither of them is aware of that.
  • Dennis the Menace: After vacuuming paint and saw chips from his garage floor, Dennis reverses the fan and blows the contents into Mr. Wilson's barbecue. Later, when eating his steak, Wilson says "it tastes like paint... and wood".
  • Down Periscope
    Lt. Pascal: Jesus, Buckman, this stuff's been on the Stingray since Korea! This can expired in 1966!
    Buckman: (Dipping his finger into the mysterious substance and tasting it) What's the matter, sir? It still tastes like creamed corn.
    Pascal: Except, it's DEVILED HAM!
  • In It Takes Two, a character samples escargot for the first time and comments that it tastes like a balloon. She had a point.
  • In the Steve Martin vehicle L.A. Story, the protagonists best friend gives him a glass full of some sort of experimental beverage. Upon being asked how it is, he replies "It's exactly like licking a shag carpet." It gets better. He pours the drink out over a nearby potted plant, setting up a Brick Joke where the plant died.
  • Dracula is forced to feed on a wino in Love at First Bite:
    What was that maniac drinking? Tastes like the Volga River at low tide.
  • You may recall the scene from The Matrix, where the Nebuchadnezzar's crew is sitting around the mess room talking about the taste — or non-taste, as the case may be — of chicken.
  • In Mother (1996), the eponymous mother has a large vat of orange ice cream that she has kept in her freezer for years. She offers some to her grown-up son, who disgustedly proclaims "it tastes like an orange foot."
  • In The Other Guys, Detective Gamble (played by Will Ferrell) tends to be verbally abusive to his wife (Eva Mendes) for reasons known only to himself.
    "Who would slow-roast a dog's ass over a fire and serve it to their husband?"
  • In Once Upon a Spy, Tannehil gives Chenault some gum to chew that turns out to be disguised thermite. Chenault comments that it tastes like "axle grease and curry". Tannehil responds "No curry".
  • The Parent Trap remake. The mother has just drunk one of those hideous hangover cures that only bartenders in movies know how to make. "I think I just drank tar."
  • Repo! The Genetic Opera: Luigi has coffee that tastes like "rat piss."
  • In Scotland, PA: "I can't believe I drank that water. It tastes like ass."
  • In Scream 4, Gale claims that Judy's lemon squares taste like ass.
  • Tremors 2: Aftershocks: Justified - when survivalist Burt gives Earl and Grady some of his MREs to eat, Earl unwittingly bites into the wrong item:
    Earl: Ugh. This tastes like toilet paper!
    Grady (sounding amused): Earl, that is the toilet paper.
  • The Young Poisoner's Handbook: When Graham's stepmother notices an odd taste and smell in her tea, the cup is passed along the family who variously compare it to ammonia, brake fluid and cat's piss.

    Literature 
  • Agatha H. and the Airship City:
    But this - this was new low. He looked at the crudely printed label on the bottle in his hand. "Beetle Beer" it proclaimed. Fair enough, he thought, I can believe that.
  • In Animorphs, this is lampshaded when Rachel comments that a force field they're swimming through generates a sensation 'like chewing on aluminum foil with a mouth full of fillings' and Marco asks her how she'd know what that feels like...
  • In Ptolemy's Gate from The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Mr. Button describes a cup of tea brewed by Kitty, who is upset about her plan having been rejected by Bartimaeus, as being "as insipid as gnat's piss."
  • In Because of Winn-Dixie a little girl describes Littmus Lozenges as "It tastes like when you don't have a dog". Justified in that said candy makes you remember your sorrows.
  • In The BFG, snozzcumbers are absolutely vile things likened to cockroaches in frog slime. The problem is, these are the only source of food indigenous to Giantland, so the titular giant has to either eat them or join his brothers in eating humans.
  • A character in Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities says that Chinese wine tastes like dead mouse. In this case, the phrase probably comes to him because The Dead Mouse is his nickname for his boss.
  • In Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books, a character is made to drink willow tea, which she complains tastes like horse urine. Coolly, the healer informs her that horse urine tastes far worse.
  • In City of Bones (2002), LAPD detectives Bosch and Edgar are interviewing a witness who belongs to the Church of Nature. She offers them some tea that Edgar doesn't like.
    Edgar: This Church of Nature tea tastes like piss water.
    Bosch: How would you know what piss water tastes like?
  • Subverted in one of Joan Hess's Claire Malloy mysteries, where a character takes the time to specify that he's never tasted horse piss, but suspects it's a lot like the lousy homemade beer he's sampling.
  • Clue: Book 17, chapter 6 ("Taste Test") revolves around the characters' favorite soda flavors. Most of them are innocuous, albeit strange flavors for soda: mouthwash, yams, grape jam, chicken, and squash. Mrs. White's favorite, however, tastes like floor wax (as in, that's what it's actually supposed to taste like). Maybe she thinks of it more as a dessert topping?
  • In Confessions From the Principal's Chair, one of Robin's first acts as substitute principal of her new middle school (it's a long story) is breaking up a spaghetti fight between two 1st graders. When she asks them why they're throwing spaghetti at each other, they say that they won't eat it because it "tastes like butt." Cue Robin asking them how they know what butt tastes like.
  • At one point in Stephen King's Dark Tower series of novels, Eddie asks Roland if raccoon-like billy-bumblers make good eating. Roland answers no, they're horrible: tough and gamy, and he'd sooner eat dog. When quizzed, he confirms that, yes, he's also eaten dog meat (though from the wider context of the book it can be inferred that this is a misunderstanding on Roland's part - Eddie had previously given him hot dogs, which he assumes are made from dogs).
  • In Dave Barry Does Japan Dave describes trying out a Japanese energy drink called Hugo, and all he can say is "it better be healthful because it tastes like coyote spit."
  • Discworld:
    • Parodied in the book Monstrous Regiment. Igor comments that the beer tastes like horthe pithth, and when asked if he's ever drunk horse piss, responds in the positive. Later, after the barkeep has been "persuaded" to produce the good stuff, Igor sticks with the original beer, commenting "Look, I never thaid I didn't like it."
    • Much earlier on, in Equal Rites:
      Esk (to bartender): "Milk. You know, milk. You get it from cows."
      Narrator: All the bartender had was beer, which his customers claimed he got from cats...
      • In Ankh-Morpork, you don't buy beer — you rent it (just think about it for one minute). Of course, it's better than the river "water". Which is only called such because it's too thin to plow...
    • In The Last Hero, one of the Silver Horde tells the inexperienced bard they're dragging with them that the fish-demons they just chopped up will make a perfectly good meal because "When you're hungry enough, everything Tastes Like Chicken". He's right.
  • The book Good Morning, Miss Dove had a flashback sequence in which the title character, teaching about the habits of a species of bear, mentioned that they liked to eat red ants, which taste like cinnamon. A smart-alecky student asked how the textbook's writer knew how they tasted. "Did he taste some? Or did he ask a bear?" (Miss Dove reprimanded her; raising a legitimate question was fine, but the "ask a bear" part was going too far.) In the story's present day, it's revealed that the student later actually ate some red ants as an experiment and found that they do taste like cinnamon.
  • Harry Potter
    • At the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Dumbledore tries an Every Flavored Bean and knows instantly that it's earwax flavor.
    • Not that it's uncommon to know what earwax tastes like, as anyone who's ever put their finger first in their ear and then their mouth will tell you. Children are also prone to tasting or eating earwax, as well as other things. Speaking of which, early on in the book Ron tells the story of how his brother George claimed he ate a bogie-flavoured bean once.
    • In part 1 of the film version of Deathly Hallows, Mad-Eye Moody claims that Polyjuice Potion "tastes roughly like goblin piss", and Fred Weasley can't resist making a joke about how Moody knows what goblin piss tastes like.
      Fred: ...Just...trying to defuse the tension.
  • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Ted describes AM's synthetic "manna" as tasting "like boiled boar urine". Knowing AM, he probably made his victims consume it as part of some past torment.
  • Wolf, in Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse, compares the taste of the gray sludge fed to cured humans to "salted snot". In fairness, it's meant to go into the stomach through a feeding port, not to encounter the mouth at all.
  • A character in the short story "Luvina" in the book El Llano en Llamas by Mexican writer Juan Rulfo mentions that warm beer tastes like donkey piss (which prompts the question if cold donkey piss tastes like beer...)
  • Example of a positive comparison in Paper Towns: Lacey tastes a GoFast bar for the first time and says it "tastes like hope feels". Ben describes the taste of GoFast bars as "what blood tastes like to mosquitoes", which was probably intended as a positive comparison but makes them sound a lot less appealing.
  • Rod Allbright Alien Adventures: In book 3, while Rod is traveling on the Ferkel, he and Madame Pong try to program the ship's food system with things that are edible to humans. Color and texture are easy, but taste is not, and Rod specifically mentions that its first attempt at chocolate chips tastes like "a combination of chicken, blueberries, and earwax". He then notes that he's just guessing on the last part - he's never actually tasted earwax. "But this stuff had a bizarre and horrible undertaste, and that's as good a way to describe it as any."
  • Roys Bedoys: In “Stop Wasting Money, Roys Bedoys!”, Truly thinks some gum tastes like cardboard.
  • In the Dr. Seuss book Scrambled Eggs Super!, Peter T. Hooper avoids the eggs of the Twiddler Owls, because, “I knew that the eggs of those fellows who twiddle, taste sort of like dust from inside a bass fiddle.” He also avoids the stroodle (who’s “sort of a stork, but with fur like a poodle”), claiming “the yolks of [their] eggs taste like fleece, while the whites taste like very old bicycle grease.”
  • In Septimus Heap Book Seven: Fyre, Septimus thinks that the ghost of Alther Mella would feel that flying through the heavy wind was like being Passed Through by pixies with boots on, though "How Alther knew what being Passed Through by pixies with boots on was like, Septimus had no idea."
  • In Shadows of the Empire, Lando spends an hour making Giju stew but apparently uses too much Boonta-spice. Luke compares it to "old boot plastic and fertilizer drenched in pond scum".
  • In the book Skinnybones, the main character's grandmother says she doesn't feed her cats a certain kind of cat food because "It tastes like rubber." The main character remarks that he isn't sure if he should be more concerned that this means she's tasted the cat food herself, or that she's eaten rubber.
  • One of the Wayside School books has a story where the main character of the chapter, Maurecia, eats ice-cream every day but is getting bored with the flavours. Ms. Jewls creates ice-cream named after her, but she can't taste it because it tastes the same as when she's tasting nothing; everyone else claims it tastes wonderful. The next few weeks have them going through the entire class, with everyone having a taste relating somehow to their personality, and everyone agreeing that Todd tastes the best. He apparently tasted so good that every so often, Maurecia would try to take a bite out of his arm.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 10th Kingdom has a subversion. Tony tastes baked beanstalk (no, not baked beans. BEANSTALK). "It tastes like an old mattress!" "No, it doesn't. Old mattresses have a sweaty, meaty taste."
  • 100 Things to Do Before High School: In "Always Tell the Truth (But Not Always) Thing!", Crispo becomes a Caustic Critic in his cookery class. He tells one pair their cookies are "Too buttery... As in too much butt!" and compares his teacher's cookies to elephant dung.
  • On The Andy Griffith Show, Andy and Barney both comment that Aunt Bea's infamous pickles taste like they've been floating in kerosene.
  • One episode of Arthur of the Britons had Arthur attempting to unite two tribes. During a feast, he suggests the two tribes swap their bread. This almost leads to a riot as each side tries the other's bread and declares it to be 'frog spawn' or some other insult.
  • Barney Miller: Subverted in episode "Rain". Harris drinks the Bad to the Last Drop coffee, grimaces, and says "Tastes like a roof." It probably does, because Yemana used water leaking from the ceiling.
  • An episode of Better Off Ted had a professional food tester try out some lab-grown meat. He decides it tastes like "Despair".
  • In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, who hates Greek food, indulges Leonard and tries a lamb kebab:
    And what a civilization is the Greeks. They gave us science, democracy, and little cubes of meat that taste like sweat!
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy is downing straight alcohol in "Life Serial" to drown her sorrows. However, she is not a drinker, and she's downing mixer drinks straight, so to her and even to most seasoned drinkers it would taste like feet.
  • In Call the Midwife one of the midwives meets an Irish Catholic priest regarding one of her patients (a girl who ran away from Ireland to London). The priest offers tea and apologies for only having Fig Newtons to go with them, as they "taste like... treacle. Wrapped in a doormat."
  • Canada's Worst Driver: During Season 5's Driving Stick challenge, Jacob comments that the smoke coming out of the car "smells like burning babies". (It was actually the smell of a destroyed gearbox ... or, as Andrew put it, "the smell of burning money".)
  • Castle: According to Rick Castle, the coffee at NYPD tastes like a monkey peed in battery acid.
  • Charmed: Comes complete with a Last-Second Word Swap that doesn't make things better. Piper drinks a potion, gags, then says, "Ugh, it tastes like ass... phalt."
  • A contestant on Chopped, faced with lutefisk as an ingredient, remarked that he'd never even heard of it before, then (after reluctantly tasting it) that it was like biting into an old kitchen sponge. Which, for the record, he denied he'd ever done.
  • Come Dine With Me: During a week in Dover, one bulldog mad contestant—who included a bulldog themed dish in every course—made a dipping sauce for her Dover sole she called 'Bulldog Baster'. After tasting it, one of the other contestants commented that it tasted like dog sweat, causing narrator Dave Lamb to ask "How would you know?!"
  • According to Annie in Copper, London's finest Earl Grey tea "tastes like an iron fence."
  • In an episode of Corner Gas, Brent says Oscar's cooking tastes like bug repellent.
  • One episode of Cory in the House had Sophie take up cooking and being quite bad at it, but the adult characters all pretend to like her food to spare her feelings. Cory, not in on the charade, inadvertently ends it when he tries her latest dish, some kind of gelatin, and says to her face that it tastes like dirty laundry.
  • Daredevil (2015): In the season 2 premiere, the Nelson & Murdock trio are relaxing after work with a game of billiards at Josie's. Karen goes to grab a pitcher of water:
    Foggy Nelson: You can't drink the water here. Josie's pipes have issues.
    Matt Murdock: Rust, mold.
    Foggy Nelson: I think I can actually see the bacteria floating in there.
    Karen Page: [laughs] Oh, ew, ew!
    Matt Murdock: See, that-that's why we, uh, keep our cocktails neat.
    Foggy Nelson: Pretend you're abroad. On vacation someplace exotic, but no mojitos. Josie just throws mint in the beer.
    Matt Murdock: [laughs] Right.
    • In "Kinbaku", during Matt and Karen's date, they first attempt to go to a stuffy upscale restaurant:
      Karen Page: Do you drink wine? [catches herself] Shit, I know that.
      Matt Murdock: I don't drink anything they don't serve at Josie's.
      Karen Page: Yeah, well, I don't see swill on the menu.
  • The Dead Gorgeous "Reliving History" contains this exchange:
    "This porridge tastes like cardboard."
    "You've eaten cardboard?"
  • Dead Like Me used this one:
    Mason: This juice tastes like ass! Here, you try it!
    George: No thanks, I'm trying to stay off the ass juice.
  • Death in Paradise:
    • In "Predicting Murder", Inspector Poole comments that a local cocktail consisted of nothing but rum, lime, and ice, but somehow tasted like paint stripper.
    • Poole's fever-induced description of Camille's mother's chicken soup in "An Unhelpful Aid" is colourful, if less than flattering.
  • Tristan says this in Degrassi: The Next Generation when eating hospital food. His brother thinks he's exaggerating but then tries the food and immediately agrees.
  • In The Drew Carey Show, Oswald and Lewis get Drew a "new" refrigerator from the dump. Kate proclaims that it smells like "ham and feet," to which Drew replies "I've smelled ham and feet. That ain't ham and feet." Later in the same scene, Drew tells them to get it out of his house because it smells like "wet cat and cheese," and Lewis and Oswald go "Ohhhh, wet cat and cheese!" as if Alex Trebek had just given them the right answer.
  • Ellery Queen: In "The Adventure of the Hard-Hearted Huckster", Flannigan complains about the taste of cigar:
    "You call this a cigar! It tastes like the inside of a lumberjack's boot!"
  • Firefly:
    Jayne (on entering the ship's dining area): It smells like crotch.
    Simon: Could you not do that? Like, ever?
  • Fraggle Rock: Gobo teams up with Cotterpin to find the Cavern of Lost Dreams, the original city of the Doozers, who used mushrooms as their building material. The Cavern is composed of a network of firm, brick-like columns, arches, and walls, in contrast to the more streamlined, modernist Doozer towers, but Gobo figures that if Doozers made them, Fraggles can eat them. He soon finds out otherwise.
    Gobo: Yuck! They taste like moldy old mushrooms. Horrible!
  • Friends: The shepherd's pie/trifle incident in the episode "The One Where Ross Got High". Though it's almost definitely just a joke, with no intention of any sort of Continuity Nod whatsoever, there is an earlier episode where Rachel implies she likes having her toes sucked, and Ross and Rachel were together for a while.
    • Note that even after everyone expresses disgust with the dish, Big Eater Joey still eats it and loves it. Afterwards, he even sneaks around and finishes up the portions that everybody else abandoned.
      Ross: It tastes like feet!
      Joey: [still eating] I like it.
      Ross: Are you kidding?
      Joey: What's not to like? Custard? Good. Jam? Good. Meat? GOOD.
    • Friends used this joke in the episode "The One with the List". Monica had been hired to create recipes using a chocolate substitute called "mockolate" and made mockolate chip cookies. Phoebe says "This is what EVIL must taste like!" The line was originally "These must be the cookies they serve in hell!", but Lisa Kudrow couldn't get through the line without laughing.
  • On Full House Danny makes the dish he first cooked for his girlfriend Vicky "turkey in a boot" (diced turkey and creamed vegetables in a pastry shaped like a boot). After Joey accidentally drops the dish on the floor, Vicky confesses to Danny that she never actually liked the dish, explaining that it tasted like it sounds.
  • Russell Howard was given an ice lolly made of soup in an episode of Genius. He described it as "what I imagine licking a 70-year-old woman's ankle would taste like."
  • Gilmore Girls: Sookie and Lorelai just had a rather useless class about opening an inn and they reach a refreshment table, hoping to make up the admission fee in cookies.
    Lorelai: These better be the best damn cookies in the world.
    Sookie: [eats one] And they taste like feet.
    • In another episode Lorelai and Rory are very hungry, but they refuse to go downstairs because Lorelai says they will end up having to chit-chat with Boston dentist also staying in their B & B and answer boring questions about life in Stars Hollow. Lorelai finds fuzzy Certs in her purse. After eating it, she says it tasted like keys.
  • Good Eats: Fish sauce is used to add the flavour of "cat food and athletic sock...but in a good way".
  • On an episode of Good News Week, Paul McDermott referred to Fosters as tasting like "watered down horse piss". There was a moment's pause and then he asked: "How do we know that?".
  • Durian showed up again in Graceland. Johnny has to eat enough of it for it to seep out of his pores because he's undercover with a Southeast Asian smuggling ring. When he cuts the thing open, everyone in the room visible recoils and gags, and Charlie says it smells like wet shoes and cheese.
  • On The Great British Bake Off, a contestant was criticized for decorating her cake with a non-edible marigold. Co-host Noel Fielding immediately put it in his mouth, then spit it out. He said it tasted like "a clown's nose."
  • An episode of Harry Enfield and Chums had a sketch with the Slobs:
    Waynetta: Wayne?
    Wayne: What?
    Waynetta: Your breath really stinks.
    Wayne: So what?
    Waynetta: It's disgusting, it's like kissing the dog!
    Wayne:...How do you know?
    Waynetta: I just... know.
  • Gordon Ramsay can get a bit colorful when describing one of his chef's badly cooked dishes on Hell's Kitchen. He at one point describes a soup as tasting like gnat's piss, and also describes a slice of undercooked meat as being "like a bison's penis."
  • Played with on Home Improvement. Randy's having a birthday party and the pretty girl slips on the dance floor that Tim overwaxed, twisting her ankle. Not have a bag of ice, apparently, Tim soaks her foot in the bowl of punch to keep down swelling. When her father arrives to pick her up and helps himself to the punch, he comments on its good taste. When told his daughter "helped make it", he says it tastes like she had a hand in it.
  • House: Dr. House rules out the possibility that a patient had accidentally eaten large quantities of horse chestnuts by pointing out that they "taste like a horse's lower-than-chest nuts." How he knows what that tastes like is not specified.
    • While possibly being hyperbolic in the above example, House in one episode determined a patient was diabetic by tasting her urine and declaring that it tasted sweeter than normal urine. This was the standard way of diagnosing diabetes before modern testing procedures were invented; the full name of diabetes is diabetes mellitus, which means, more or less "honey-tasting urine."
  • In How I Met Your Mother the gang orders burgers. Everybody finds them delicious, except Marshall.
    Marshall: When you've had the best burger in New York City, every other burger tastes like my grandpa's feet. But you guys eat up, enjoy my grandpa's feet.
  • Hustle: In "Eat Yourself Slender", a mark (being rude to a waitress as the marks always are) complains that his beer tastes like "warm monkey spit".
  • I Love Lucy: Upon tasting watercress, Lucy remarks "Very tasty... if you like buttered grass."
  • Jessie:
    • In "G.I Jessie", Bertram competes with a lunchlady in baking the wedding cake for Jessie's father's wedding. The lunchlady licks the icing of Bertram's cake and remarks: "This icing tastes like dirt". A moment later, Darla gets knocked over the cake and says the same line.
    • Adam Sandler, guest-starring As Himself in the episode "Punched Dumped Love", is seen at the High-School Dance serving punch that tastes like Kevin James' feet.
  • In a scene in the fourth episode of Joe Schmo 2, deleted from the broadcast episode but included on the DVD, Derek serves the group an awful British breakfast. T.J. comments that it tastes like "boiled ass," causing someone to ask just what exactly that tastes like.
  • Subverted in Leverage. Parker walks up to a guard and asks, "does this smell like chloroform to you?" before knocking him out with it.
  • Little Lunch: In "The Pavlova", Rory says that Mrs. Goncha's disgusting pavlova tasted like soap. Debra Jo says she wouldn't know because she has never eaten soap.
  • Averted in Lost Girl. Foot soup actually tastes pretty good. So good in fact, Kenzi didn't know it was foot soup until she was told. She didn't take it well.
  • Bear Grylls of Man vs. Wild once compared drinking from a natural watering hole to "a bit like drinking from the loo bowl". He might not have been talking about the taste...
  • Midsomer Murders: While drinking bad coffee in "Down Among the Dead Men", Barnaby wonders if he is drinking coffee or silt.
  • In an episode of Monk, the titular character, a mysophobe, freaks out after discovering that the wine he has been drinking had been pressed by feet. He remarks, "It's foot wine... I can taste the feet... and toes."
    • In a Christmas episode, Capt. Stottlemeyer has the following opinion on an herbal drink he's trying for his back pain.
    Captain: Some organic hippie concoction from Hell — my aunt sent me a whole carton of it. (take a drink and grimaces) Tastes like chalk.
    Natalie: What's in it?
    Monk: (reading the label) "Chalk extract."
  • Related joke: In one episode of Night Court, Bull is struck by lightning. Art speculates that it must have been like French-kissing a light socket. Bull replies, "No, that feels different."
  • One Tree Hill finale: according to Chris, Chase's drink tastes like the devil's ass.
  • In Party Down, Steve Guttenberg tries to teach some of the caterers how to be cultured by giving them fine wine. They give a variety of responses as to what they taste, including "rope" and "dirt." Guttenburg compliments them.
  • In an early episode the Swedish children series Series/'Pip Larssons Kastrullresan, the titular Larsson family had cabbage soup (consisting of nothing but cabbage) for dinner, not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't afford anything else. While they were eating, the husband tried to placate his upset wife (since it was his fault they had no money) by saying that the soup tasted really good, whereupon one of the youngest children deadpanned that it tasted like sock.
  • In Porridge, Fletch tastes the brew made by the local moonshiner which comes served in a disinfectant bottle. Fletch remarks that they're supposed to take the disinfectant out first.
  • From British comedy show QI:
    Jeremy Clarkson: "I had a seal flipper, and it looked exactly like a marigold glove filled with wallpaper paste. And it sat and you thought, "Ooh...!" And it tasted exactly like licking a hot Turkish urinal."
    Sean Lock: "I'm very concerned that you used the word 'exactly'..."
    • Alan once delivered an anecdote which included being given a chocolate bar by a pensioner, which tasted like 'Old ladies' cupboards.'
    • One scene from Series E has everyone eating spaghetti onstage where Phill Jupitus asks for Parmesan and prompts this exchange:
    Jimmy Carr: "Parmesan's a weird food, 'cause it tastes delicious; smells like the gym socks of, er, a child with some sort of glandular problem."
    Phill: "I find that it's actually the other way around!"
  • Happens with Brody's homemade health tonic in Really Me. In a Strange Minds Think Alike moment, everybody who tastes it likens its flavour to some type of mythological creature in a bathing facility of some kind; e.g. "a gnome's steam bath" or "a hairy troll's hot tub".
  • Red Dwarf:
    • In "Pete Part 1", Arnold Rimmer disgustedly proclaims that the gravy-covered meat they're being served on punishment tastes worse than his grandmother's buttocks deep-fried in old chip fat.
    • In "Out of Time", nobody wants to drink Kryten's homemade wine because it tastes disgusting. Apparently, it's brewed out of recycled urine and tastes worse than the original waste fluid it was...
    • "Legion" mentions that the water has been recycled so many times that it's starting to taste like Dutch Lager.
  • Rizzoli & Isles:
    • After drinking the coffee in the cafeteria, Jane tells Stanley he should take his dirty socks out of the coffee maker.
    • In "Love the Way You Lie", Frankie complains that a health drink tastes like "Sweat and rotten celery". Lampshaded when Frost tells him to stop drinking it, and that he also should stop drinking his own sweat.
  • Downplayed on Salute Your Shorts when Sponge drank some of Telly's bulk-up formula.
    Sponge: This tastes like Donkeylips's socks' smell!
  • Rob Schneider once appeared on a talk show in Singapore, during a regional tour to promote Deuce Bigalow - he was treated to several regional fruits, including the durian which he described as tasting like "men's locker room".
  • In Scrubs, Elliot was throwing Carla a baby shower and one of her baby shower games was "Guess the Baby Food Flavor" that she made Keith play to get people interested. Keith remarked that it tasted like "cab-driver feet". Elliot's response: "It's turnips! Now you have to eat the whole jar."
  • In The Sopranos episode "The Strong, Silent Type", Tony and Junior are sampling some wine Furio brought back from Italy, which Junior grumps "reminds [him] of people's feet." After which, he continues drinking it.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Birthright", Geordi and Worf are having Pasta al Fiorella on Deep Space Nine, but Geordi isn't fond of it while Worf is scarfing it down.
    Geordi La Forge: Worf, I don't see how you can eat that. It tastes like... liquid polymer.
    Worf: (Beat) Delicious.
  • Steve Harvey was given a sample of Vegemite by an Australian-born audience member on an episode of The Steve Harvey Show. His response? "Vegemite sounds like a pesticide. That's about damn near what it tastes like."
  • Supernatural:
    • In the episode "Malleus Mallificarum," Ruby saves Dean from coughing up a lung (it's a long story) with a disgusting cure. While it's witchcraft, he seems to think "it tastes like ass".
    • A similar gag re: pizza in the seventh-season episode "Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie" -
    Tyler: That stuff tastes like butt.
    Dean: What? Come on, it can't be that bad...Let's see here. (takes a bite) Uh...(spits it out in disgust) That is butt.
  • Hyde talking to Kelso in That '70s Show:
    "What's convenient isn't always what's best. If it was, this frozen pizza wouldn't taste like monkey butt."
  • True Blood:
    • Jessica Hamby does a Spit Take when Bill first offers her a swig of the synthetic Tru Blood.
    Jessica Hamby: Ugh, it tastes like shit! Why are you doing this to me?! Ugh!
    Bill Compton: It's not bad. You'll get used to it. Try a little more.
    Jessica Hamby: Fuck no! You can't force me. I'll report you.
    • Later Jessica has this to say about the taste of A- flavor True Blood:
      "Less like ass than the A+, but more like ass than the B-."
  • In one episode of Two and a Half Men, Charlie improvised a song when trying to get a kid to hurry up and finish his dinner: "I like corn, it tastes real neat. I don't like peas, they taste like feet."
  • Averted/subverted/lampshaded/whatever in Web Soup - after the host shows a clip of a polar bear defecating in its pool, he brings out a drink based on it and takes a swing. "It tastes like something I shouldn't recognize the taste of!"
  • Whose Line Is It Anyway?:
    • One Scenes From a Hat sketch had Colin boasting, "I make murals from my own feces!" Later in the same segment but with different parameters, Wayne complained that a drink "tastes like a painting by Colin Mochrie!"
    • A variation from a different episode where the suggestion was "rejected perfume fragrances":
    Wayne: "I call it, 'Like Ass'!"
  • Wizards of Waverly Place second episode:
    Dad: This one has too much cheese, this one needs barbecue sauce, and this one tastes like armpit... How did we even know that?
    Max: Wrestling.
  • The X-Files, "The Unnatural": Mulder bets that the air in his mouth tastes better than Scully's non-fat tofutti rice dreamsicle. He thought she brought herself real ice-cream and wanted her to share, but a moment later, he grabs her and takes a huge bite of the dreamsicle, and doesn't complain.

    Music 
  • Aerosmith's "Eat The Rich" has this line about something that you would probably metaphorically be able to eat (concerning Steven Tyler's opinion about snobby rich people):
    Their attitudes may taste like shit. But go real good with wine.
  • Eric Bogle's "Goodbye Lucky Country":
    The beer still tastes like glue
    • And from "The Aussie Bar-B-Q":
    Where the snagsnote  all taste like fried toothpaste
  • Del The Funky Homosapian's "If You Must" is LOADED with some rather interesting comparisons to what things smell like to him (the song is about him being around those that didn't practice good hygiene, after all). The interesting thing, though, is that he inverts this in the second verse by saying this line ABOUT someone's feet:
    One's fool's feet smelled like it struck some matchsticks.
  • From "She's My Girl" on An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer:
    So though for breakfast she makes coffee that tastes like shampoo
  • Amanda Palmer has an entire song on the evils of Vegemite, which includes "It tastes like sadness. It tastes like batteries. It tastes like asses." Enjoy it for yourself.

    Theatre 
  • In Beetlejuice, while reflecting on all the weird hobbies she and Adam have tried, many of which didn't pan out, Barbara says that their homemade kambucha "tasted like armpits". This is followed by Adam noting "We are not kambucha people; we did find that out," which could be interpreted two ways—either they're not capable of making it properly, or they discovered that they hate it in general and that, as far as they're concerned, all kambucha tastes like armpits.
  • In How to Talk Minnesotan: The Musical one of the songs is a commercial for the fictional Hakinblip Cough Syrup. One of the cast members (Ed the middle-aged farmer) isn't enthused about the idea, saying that the stuff "tastes like the bottom of my rowboat."
  • In the song "Master of the House" from Les Misérables, the inn's patrons sing that Thénardier's stew tastes like something he scraped off the street, and his wine is like turpentine and he pressed it with his feet. (There is, in fact, a wine that is supposed to taste like turpentine, being made with actual pine resin, but we doubt that Thénardier was serving that.)

    Urban Legends 
  • A high school biology teacher tells the class that human semen is 80% sugar. A student (usually female) raises her hand and asks, "How come it tastes like salt, then?" He responds (incorrectly) that the taste buds for sweetness are at the tip of the tongue, not the back of the throat.

    Video Games 
  • Assassin's Creed Syndicate: Shaun's tasting notes from the beer bottle collectibles are full of this, since it turns out that beer from small breweries operating before food safety standards... isn't as great as Shaun expected "traditional English small-brewery beer" to be. He at one point mentions that they all have "side notes of sturgeon and the dark tears of a recently divorced ploughman" and wonders if Rebecca is trolling him by messing with his taste impressions through the Helix.
  • Best of Three: Disgusted by his tea that he forgot to put sugar in, Grant says that it "tastes like old socks".
  • In The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC of Borderlands, the titular General Knoxx describes Pandora as smelling like "Hemorrhoids wrapped in bacon".
  • In Deus Ex, the following exchange takes place in a bar:
    JC Denton: "How are the drinks here?"
    Renault: "Great if you like rat piss."
    JC Denton: "Never tried it."
  • Dragon Age:
  • In Fallout 3:
    Moira Brown: "Hey! I think I've discovered a new way to cook Radroach meat! Still tastes like old feet, though."
    • In an unrelated incident Three Dog says that Nuka-Cola Quantum "tastes like radscorpion shit and turns your piss blue. Or does it taste like radscorpion piss and turn your shit blue? Whatever."note 
  • In Patch 5.3, Final Fantasy XIV introduces Archon loaf, a staple bread of Sharlayan which is made from pulverized fish and vegetable flour and has much to desire in the way of taste. Sharlayans make their food for nutrition first and taste second, if not third. The only one of the Scions who likes the stuff is Urianger, Krile utterly hates it, and the others are ambivalent about it. Endwalker introduces something even worse to the mix: Panaloaf, which is meant to be an improvement upon Archon loaf. The first quest of the Level 80+ Alchemy/Culinarian chain, "Perfectly Awful," has the Warrior of Light try a sample of this new concoction, with each sample varying by the player's race.
    "The initial flavor is akin to chewing on rotten garbage (Hyur)/one of otherworldly astringency (Elezen)/so complex as to be unidentifiable (Lalafell)/like a numbness in the tip of your tongue (Miqo'te)/akin to mushy grain filling your mouth (Roegadyn)/like a rush of indescribable hatred (Au Ra)/like savoring the absurdity of mankind (Hrothgar)/an affront to the gods themselves (Viera), which gradually transitions into an overwhelming sensation of nausea (Hyur)/a feeling of intense regret (Elezen)/a hauntingly unpleasant aftertaste (Lalafell)/an overall sense of crushing emptiness (Miqo'te)/a disturbingly solid mass of congealed blandness (Roegadyn)/a sense of deep and abiding despair (Au Ra)/an awareness of your own futility in the face of inexorable fate (Hrothgar)/a bleakly entropic aftertaste (Viera). It is quite possibly the worst thing you have ever eaten."
  • Early on in Fire Emblem: Awakening, Lissa complains that the meal of bear meat the party has prepared smells like old boots. "Wait, I take that back— boots smell better!"
    • The Avatar at one point makes a carrot stew that everyone complained tasted like dishwater. Panne, coming from a race of rabbit people, is the only one that actually liked it.
  • BioWare seems to love this trope, as Jade Empire gives a good one in regards to a Hideous Hangover Cure.
    Three Sheets Dutong: I hate that restorative potion! Ugh! That stuff tastes like vomit baked in a glaze of goat hair and garnished with a sprinkling of horse dung.
  • When consuming a tiny bottle of absinthe in Kingdom of Loathing, the resulting message says the absinthe "tastes like licorice, pain, and green."
  • Mass Effect 2:
    • A background conversation has Engineer Daniels complain to Engineer Donnelly that "all haggis tastes like ass", to which Donnelly replies "Aye, but in the right hands, it can taste like mighty fine arse."
    • There's also a conversation between a crewman and the chef after Shephard provides provisions:
      Crewman Hawthorne: Rupert! There's something different with tonight's meal! Seems like you put in more food and less ass.
      Mess Sargent Rupert Gardner [sarcastically]: Yeah, yeah, keep talkin'.
    • In the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, you can get a scene where Joker and Steve Cortez get into a drinking contest...with some cocktails Joker made out of "horse choker" and antiseptic mouthwash. Cortez compares it to the north end of a southbound goat.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
    • A turian remarks that the water on Kadara tastes, after being filtered so drinking it does not result in instant death, like a krogan's undersuit.
    • Later on, at the New Tuchanka colony, a krogan can be heard complaining about some medicine a doctor's given him, saying it tastes like "the ass end of an elcor". The doctor curtly informs him he wasn't supposed to chew it.
  • Persona 4: During the omelet cook-off, when Kanji tries Yukiko's omelette, he initially describes the taste as "boneless" ("sterile" in the manga localization). Yukiko angrily points out that that is not a word you use to describe taste and demands that he tell her whether or not it tastes good, at which point Kanji clarifies that it's because the omelet has no taste at all.
  • The Sims
    • In The Sims 3, if a Sim eats leftover food from a cheap refrigerator, they'll sometimes note that the food "Tastes like fridge".
    • The Sims Medieval has a moodlet "Tasteless Treat: That tasted like sheep hooves, only worse!"
  • In one cutscene in Stardew Valley, Pam compares the taste of some potato juice the farmer prepares for her with "fermented baboon kidneys".
  • Used and justified in Sunless Sea, when the Bandaged Chef-Paramount fails to render a Strange Catch edible. He will tell you that, no matter what he tried (and he tried every single one of his techniques in a kitchen that looks more like an alchemist's lab), every part of what you caught, down to the last atom, tastes like the boatswain's socks. And yes, he will tell you he actually sampled them, as there's nothing he won't do in the pursuit of culinary exploration.
  • Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey: Speculative variant — when Wishbone realizes he's become an animated character stuck in The Odyssey, one of his earliest complaints is that now he'll have to eat animated food, which he says will "probably all taste like crayons".
  • A quest in World of Warcraft has you passing around a sample of beer to three NPCs. Two like it, the third says it tastes like engine degreaser.

    Web Animation 
  • DSBT InsaniT: After eating Darkness Snake's head in VRcade, Perry says it "tastes like evil".
  • In Red vs. Blue, Grif, while under the effects of a malfunctioning speed unit, mentions that he can smell clouds.
  • In Salad Fingers, "Hubert Cumberdale, you taste like soot and poo."
    • And Marjorie Stewart Baxter tastes like "Sunshine Dust".
    • Too bad we'll never find out the taste of Jeremy Fisher. Unless...?

    Webcomics 
  • Junior in 1/0 has described both the smell of burnt eyeball (himself) and the taste of a homemade joint as being "like an old Arab woman".
  • Between Failures: Carol sums up the taste of game-themed drinks nicely in this strip.
  • Blip: In the immediate aftermath of a Funbag Airbag incident, K wonders "Where am I? Why does it smell and taste like boobs?"
    • Later, a Power Bar when she's famished prompts the line, "Oh my! It's like a concert in my mouth and I'm Madonna!"
  • Cursed Princess Club: Prince Jamie is such a skilled food critic that he can even detect a chef's emotions based on the flavor of the chef's dish. But he says there are some flavors and emotions that are so nearly identical that he can accidentally confuse the two. For instance, he says excitement for the weekend tastes like fresh autumn leaves, schadenfreude tastes like tater tots, and devastation tastes like carpet.
  • Literally used in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures.
  • Dresden Codak: Apparently, when Kimiko is using her cybernetics to hack one of the networks of Nephilopolis, the system tastes kind of like soap.
  • Endtown: The results of Professor Mallard's Protein Recombinator, as shown here. Beans go in it, and come out looking like roast turkeys that taste like "creosote flavored cow flop" according to Albert.
  • Filthy Lies: The cast taste a certain kind of beer for the first time and all find it horrible. Ted declares that it tastes "like going down on a dead hooker." When the others look at him strangely, he says "What? I thought she was just bored!"
  • One Friendly Hostility strip features Derringer, at Fox's urging, brushing his teeth with expired toothpaste. He promptly exclaims, "Gross! It tastes like going down on a chick on the rag!" When Fox looks at him skeptically, he says that toothpaste should not be used after six months; Fox replies, "Shut up, Captain Redwings."
  • Gai-Gin describes Japanese seafood as smelling "like a sperm whale just vomited" and "like a shark's vagina". (Sperm whale vomit is more commonly known as ambergris, which has a sweet smell and is used as a base ingredient in perfumes, so that's not so unusual to know. The shark's vagina, on the other hand...)
  • Krakow: Kia's cooking apparently tastes like a clown raping one's mouth. Good luck figuring that one out.
  • Odori Park: Sprout's opinion of his Japanese mom's cooking is a little too informal...[1]
  • According to Tycho of Penny Arcade, Red Bull tastes like "Gonorrhea and semen."
  • In Questionable Content, when Faye visits the Secret Bakery, she has a mixed opinion of their offerings.
    Faye: Your pastries might be better than ours, but your coffee is over-roasted and smells like feet.
  • One Real Life Comics strip has Greg trying the "Potion" drink marketed in Japan to promote Final Fantasy XI. He takes one sip, then comments that it tastes "like ten thousand asses".
  • Aubrey in Something*Positive doesn't quite fulfill this trope when she complains that her coffee tastes "like a diaper smells"—but she almost does when she adds that she "could menstruate a better cup of coffee than this!" At another point, PeeJee describes a polluted swamp thus: "If a shit were to take a shit, I'm pretty sure that's how it would smell."
  • Dmitri in Spacetrawler claims that his coffee tastes like asteroid. Justified as it is actually synthesized from space debris.
  • A non-food-related Lampshade Hanging can be found in this Suicide for Hire strip.
  • Done literally in this Punch an' Pie.
  • Lampshaded in this User Friendly strip.
  • Smell variation in Terminal Lance: “Necropocalypse” Part VI.,
    Abe: Jesus. This place smells like ... sweaty baby powder queefed out of a rotting sea lion's cunt.
  • Zebra Girl: Wally gulped some vampires, before releasing them. All he has to say is that they taste like rice cakes.

    Web Originals 
  • YouTuber Atomic Shrimp taste tested a cheeseburger in a can. His final thoughts were that it tasted like the smell of dogs' feet: a healthy dog's clean feet have an earthy, mushroomy smell, and the burger tasted like that.
  • Some of B. Dylan Hollis' reactions to the really bad dishes he makes in his videos come in this manner.
    • The "war cake" from 1939:
      It tastes like a boot! Like a size 10 boot!
    • The soured raisin pie from 1943:
      Tastes like a shower drain...or a bunion.
    • The"water pie" from 1929:
      It tastes like lint! Soggy lint!
    • The Spam pie from 1969:
      Noooo! Goddamn...this is severe. Tastes like an IHOP kitchen floor.
    • Tomato aspic:
      It tastes like somebody killed Italy!
  • The Binder of Shame: The appropriately-nicknamed El Disgusto "passed out while cooking and got kind of saturated", resulting in a smell which was described by Johnny Tangent as reminding him of "a fire in a restaurant or clowns crying or something".
  • In Freeman's Mind, Gordon says bullsquid snot "tastes like dead caterpillars." Similarly, based on the smell after roasting the tentacles in Blast Pit, he says he's pretty sure it tastes nothing like chicken. He surmises it would instead taste like grasshoppers, admitting he's never tried them.
  • The website How Much Is Inside once did a tally of the phrases within a bag of candy hearts. They also taste-tested each color and concluded that the "pink" hearts taste like "cherry cough syrup and foot."
  • The WWE's JBL & Cole Show. Damien Sandow, on his "turn" during a talent competition against Rosa Mendez, he sings about Rosa's protein shake:
    Sandow: Well, this protein shake couldn't get any sadder. It looks and tastes just like fecal matter, oh Rosa! R-O-S-A Rosa!
  • In The Swan Princess review by The Nostalgia Critic, Tamara hates the closet because it smells like dead armpit. With how many people Critic's killed, they probably would know what that smells like.
  • The friend of a submitter to Not Always Friendly describes dandelion juice as tasting like earwax.
  • When Outside Xbox mixed a drink from Dishonored 2, the second attempt was less potentially lethal than the first but had a taste that Jane compared to window cleaner.
  • SCP Foundation: The experiment log for SCP-261, a vending machine that dispenses strange candy when used, has the test subjects describing the flavors of some of the snacks as such.
    • One soda was described of tasting "like pennies and dead caterpillars"
    • A "Gator-Aid" drink was described as "tastes like someone died in it". Turns out the "drink" contained different types of animal meat and swamp water.
    • A can of OK Soda. "At least we can tell why they stopped selling this stuff. Tastes like I drank television static."
    • Something with antimemetic properties that caused people to not percieve it. The only description gotten thanks to amnesiacs was that it tasted "colorless".
    • Some sugar papers, advertised as having over 4000 flavors. Each paper had its flavor written on it, with things as mundane as citrus or almond, to strange things like burning plastic, the Sombrero Galaxy and dyslexia.
  • In Stampy's Lovely World, early attempts made by Stampy to bake his own breakfast cake resulted in cakes that tasted like (among other things) dog fur, doorknobs, fish, and soggy newspapers, to the point that it was a Running Gag for 27 episodes in a row.
  • A comment regarding that reading the recaps of a particular recapper at the website Television Without Pity was "like drinking gasoline," prompted one of the owners of the website to comment "...stop drinking gasoline…the hell?"
  • In the Zero Punctuation review of the Bionic Commando reboot Yahtzee compares the taste of Pepsi to the taste of "someone wringing out his old gym socks into my mouth."

    Western Animation 
  • Jude from 6teen once used "This tea tastes like a dirty gym sock."
  • In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Jimmy and company are unknowingly teleported to a simulation of Retroville populated by very unconvincing and zombielike recreations of the citizens. The fake Sam offers them ice cream, which Libby says tastes like sheetrock, but Carl doesn't seem to mind.
  • An episode of Beavis and Butt-Head had the boys try some frozen yogurt. They decide it tastes like paint, so they use it as paint to vandalize the mall. Granted, Beavis and Butt-Head may have tasted paint. One ep did show them getting high off the fumes.
  • In one episode of Beetlejuice, Lydia is learning to cook and offers one of her salads to BJ to taste. He takes a bite, hesitates, sees Lydia's warning glare, and, straining for a compliment about the salad, finally concludes that "It tastes... uh... green!" This from a guy who snacks on beetles.
  • In Code Lyoko, this type of situation happened twice. Both times it was Odd commenting on the foods in the school's vending machine. The first was that the soup "tastes like dishwater" (though apparently having your mouth washed out with dish soap will produce that flavor) and the second was the hot chocolate (just that day for some reason) tasting like "dirty sweat socks and an old pair of sneakers". The latter prompts Ulrich to snark "Odd the gourmet".
  • In one Bad Future episode of Conan the Adventurer, the titular barbarian hero has to drink an antivenom potion that he disgustedly proclaims to taste like "fermented camel spit". Considering one of the ingredients is venom from the serpent demon-god he's fighting, the taste is probably somewhat justified.
  • Danger Mouse keels over after drinking Penfold's tea, so he subjects to an analyzer. It deduced that it was low-grade dishwater. (It wasn't Penfold's fault—a global tea theft had everyone's tea substituted with low-grade dishwater.) From the episode "Ee-Tea!"
  • In an episode of Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist, Dex and his crew are Caught in a Snare. Tung attempts to break the rope with his prehensile tongue, only for their captor to tell them that the rope is woven from unbreakable alien silkworm residue. Tongue then adds "And it tastes like feet".
  • Doug:
    • One episode has the Bluff Scouts selling chocolate door to door, only for every single person to refuse because they say the chocolate tastes like cement. Doug meets with the owner of the candy company and they discover that actual cement is being poured into the mixing vats by mistake; after they solve the problem the chocolate tastes fine.
    • In another episode, Doug and Patti are going out to a movie, and afterwards, Doug suggests they go to a cafe for some coffee. Patti says she hates coffee and it tastes like chalk. Doug agrees.
  • In an episode of Duckman, the title character tastes a microwave burrito and comments "I think I just bit into a squirrel". His partner Cornfed reads the label and rattles off a long list of ingredients including rat feces and ocelot sphincter. "But no, no squirrel."
  • DuckTales (2017): Louie claims that haggis tastes like old socks and regret. Scrooge claims that's how you tell it's a proper haggis.
  • Stewie in Family Guy: "What's that smell? Smells like sweat, anger, and shame!"
  • Final Space: Gary says as much about the smiley-faced regenerating worms he's forced to eat on a planet in Final Space — apparently their cute little heads taste like someone's poop-chute.
  • On a related note, Eduardo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends once had to pretend he liked the taste of feet, licking people's toes while gushing about the "footy goodness". He was actually covering for a puppy that he'd been hiding in the house, and it's clear that he (unlike the puppy) found the flavor revolting.
    • In the episode that introduced Cheese, Frankie tells Mac that she found him eating soap; a minute later, a girl named Louise emerges from a bathroom saying "Your soap smells like feet."
  • On Futurama, Hermes investigates the by-product of Prof. Farnsworth's glow-in-the-dark-nose-making machine:
    Hermes: It looks like toxic waste. Smells like toxic waste.
    Fry: What's it taste like?
    Hermes: Delicious fig pudding! Ooh, that's good. But a distinct aftertaste of toxic waste.
    • When Fry eats a bad egg salad sandwich in "Parasites Lost", he says "It's like there's a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up!"
    • Fry also seems to know what colors taste like.
      Huh. Did everything just taste purple for a second
    • In "Benderama", microscopic Bender clones turn Prof. Farnsworth's bath water into alcohol. Bender drinks it and says it tastes like "fine cognac with just a hint of aged scrotum."
  • Said almost word for word by Bobo in the Generator Rex episode "Badlands" when he drinks an expired can of soda:
    "This tastes like feet! And not the clean kind!"
  • In The Garfield Show, Garfield and Jon go to a new chain pizza place that had sold Jon a borderline inedible pizza. When Jon compares the taste of his pizza to cardboard, the Corrupt Corporate Executive owner unashamedly clarifies that his place's all-meat special tastes like cardboard and the pizza Jon ordered tastes closer to styrofoam.
  • In Girlstuff/Boystuff, everyone but resident vegetarian Reanne thinks tofu "tastes like feet".
  • Noodle of Gorillaz declared in the Radio 1 webchat that Murdoc smells "like halitosis on toast". More recently, 2D declared that Murdoc's singing sounds "like someone treading on a duck".
  • In Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan has described Mabel's homemade drink "Mabel Juice" (which is bright green and has plastic toys floating in it) as tasting "like coffee and nightmares had a baby".
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
    • Billy is offered a mushroom by the dwarf king Beardbottom. The following dialogue takes place:
      Billy: It tastes like my cat.
      Beardbottom: They taste like everyone's cat! It's been 300 years and I still hate the taste. I've worked with mushrooms for so long, even my sweat smells like 'em! Here, take a whiff.
      Billy: (sniffs Beardbottom's armpit) Whew, you ain't kiddin'!
    • In a later episode:
      Grim: This water tastes like zombie sweat.
      Mandy: You've tasted zombie sweat?
      Grim: Yeah, in college. It was a hot day.
  • In the Harvey Street Kids episode "Trade Wreck", after being escorted off the kids' trading post for trying to sell sponge cake that he dyed red to pass off as red velvet, Melvin eats a piece of it and describes it as tasting like math homework.
  • In Home Movies, the episode "Yoko", Eugene urinates in Coach McGuirk's canteen. After taking a swig from it and spitting it out, McGuirk demands to know which of the kids is responsible, asking rhetorically, "You know what that tastes like?" Brendon and Melissa counter by asking him, "How did you know what it was?" and "How did you identify it so quickly?" McGuirk admits that he's tasted it once before.
  • A two-part episode of Invader ZIM is titled "Gaz, Taster of Pork". In it, Gaz gains the powers of the Shadow Hog, making everything taste "like pig".
  • In The Jetsons, something is wrong with the Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle:
    George: What is this, anyway?
    Jane: What's it taste like, George?
    George: Well, this coffee tastes like rocket fuel.
    Jane: Then it's not coffee. It's tea.
  • In Jimmy Two-Shoes, an old lady says that Lucius' ice cream "tastes like old feet". According to Heloise, that's the secret ingredient.
  • In a Johnny Test episode, Johnny's dad is trying to make healthy cookies and gives some for Johnny to try. Johnny then proclaims that the cookies taste like dirt. Johnny's dad then produces a plate of dirt which he then insists that Johnny eats for comparison. Johnny apologizes for saying the cookies taste like dirt because the dirt tastes better.
  • In League of Super Evil, when the local ice cream man runs out of Voltar's favorite fudge pops, he offers him a tofu pop. Voltar describes it as tasting like "paste, mixed with glue, topped with paste".
  • In The Magic School Bus episode "Inside Ralphie", Raphie's mother gives him some purple-colored medicine that will help him fight his illness. Ralphie abhors the taste of it and says that he doesn't know how something that tastes like grape shoe polish is supposed to help him get better.
  • The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: "This candy takes like horse poop, Cap'n!"
    • Flapjack is, it should be mentioned, attempting to eat a flower at the time.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "The Cutie Map, Part 1", after eating a plateful of terrible muffins, Pinkie Pie laments "I've accidentally eaten cardboard tastier than that..."
  • Pelswick's critique of his sister's cooking: "Chewy, with an aftertaste like licking a bathtub plug."
  • When Private is accidentally dosed with a Truth Serum in The Penguins of Madagascar, he confesses that Skipper's monkfish surprise "tastes like elephant sweat, but everyone pretends they like it to spare Skipper's fragile ego".
  • In the Peppa Pig episode "Pedro's Cough", the kindergarteners, their parents, Madame Giselle and Dr. Brown Bear all get a random contagious cough and get fed medicine that cures them instantly but tastes horrible. It's said to taste like "Jelly, custard and old socks".
  • In the Phineas and Ferb two-parter "Where's Perry?" after Monogram and Doofenshmirtz are captured by an evilinated Carl:
    Major Monogram: Carl! You can't keep us cooped up in here. Though the self-serve smoothie machine is a welcome diversion.
    Carl: I'm evil, not uncivilized. Did you try the Madagascar Chocolate?
    Doofenshmirtz: Mmm, you can really taste the Madagascar!
  • From the Regular Show episode "A Bunch of Baby Ducks":
    Rigby: "It tastes like how Muscle Man smells!"
  • In The Replacements episode "Todd Strikes Out'', Riley and Todd are handed protein bars, leading to this exchange:
    Riley: "This tastes like tree bark!"
    Todd (reading the label): "Now with 48% more tree bark."
  • Robot Chicken
    • Emperor Palpatine speculates that Darth Vader, after flying around in his TIE fighter for a week, "must smell like feet wrapped in leathery, burnt bacon!"
    • Another sketch inverted this trope: A mother tells her little girl that Grandma's bones are brittle "like peanut brittle". The girl immediately tries to eat Grandma, assuming Mom was talking about her bones' flavor.
    • In the Bitch Pudding special, when she's given juice by the Shlorps, she says, "This tastes like moose dick!"
  • Robotomy: "Field of Screams": The janitor gives Thrasher and Blastus a performance-enhancing serum that "tastes like gasoline and feet" and comes from a pipe down by the playground.
  • Rugrats: A Running Gag (each one makes sense in context):
    "This coffee tastes like mud."
    "It is mud."
    • In one episode, Grandma Minka brings over some borscht that she made (a cold soup made from beetroot). Grandpa Boris quietly comments that it tastes like glue, but he's also been eating it for 60 years, so he can't really say anything.
  • In "The Perfect Pancake" from Sid the Science Kid, Sid says that the burnt pancakes typically made by his father Mort taste like chewy rocks. He admits he's never actually eaten a chewy rock, but that he's guessing it doesn't taste good.
  • The Simpsons:
    • In "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", Ralph Wiggum comments upon tasting Homer's tomato-tobacco hybrid plant ("ToMacco") that it "tastes like Grandma." After tasting it himself, his father, Chief Wiggum, agrees. Despite the taste, both of them ended up getting addicted to ToMacco almost immediately.
    • In "Das Bus", when the kids from the Model UN were stuck on that island, Ralph tried to eat some wild berries. He responds with "They taste like burning." Happens a lot to the poor kid.
  • In South Park, the coffee at Tweek Bros. Coffeehouse is described as tasting like raw sewage and 3-day old moldy diarrhea. The video game South Park: The Stick of Truth reveals years later why people still keep coming back: It's addictive due to being laced with meth.
  • Spliced: Entrée, who was a giant at the time, says "He tastes like feet" after he attempts to eat Two-legs Joe.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • When Squidward is subbing for SpongeBob at the Krusty Krab grill.
      Customer #1: P.U., you call this food?
      Customer #2: My sandwich tastes like a fried boot!
      Customer #3: My sandwich is a fried boot!
    • And in "Whale of a Birthday", when Pearl's friends drink from the punch bowl...
      Pearl's Friend: Ew, it tastes like dishwater!
      Squidward: It is dishwater.
    • In "Rock Bottom", SpongeBob eats some Glove World candy, then spits it out because it's "glove flavored".
  • The Venture Brothers - Phantom Limb offers Dr. Girlfriend some Asiago cheese while pompously holding forth on its quality; she grimaces and comments "Tastes like the inside of an old Thermos!"
  • Total Drama Action: after being forced to kiss Duncan in one of the challenges, Heather disgustedly exclaims that he "tastes like street!".
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: In "Fall of the Castle of Lions", Lance complains that Nunvil, the drink Coran is serving, "tastes like hot-dog water and feet".
  • In the What A Cartoon short The Powerpuff Girls in "Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins", Buttercup complains that Fuzzy's meat jam tastes like dog food.

    Real Life 
  • Because your scent receptors ingest the particles that translate to odor, if you smell feet, you're already eating them.
  • Foot fetishists often take this term literally.... and they actually don't mind.
  • Many people with specific food sensitivities will report that specific classes of foods taste and smell completely inedible to them. People sensitive to alliums, for example, often describe grilled onion or garlic as smelling like sweaty feet or armpits.
    • People with peanut allergy will often describe them as tasting like Novocaine - because their mouths and throats go numb on contact as anaphylactic shock starts.
  • Thanks to Jelly Belly manufacturing real-life analogue of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans, now people will be able to say for certain that something tastes like feet. Or boogers. Or earwax.
    • Which prompts the question of how the Jelly Belly company's R&D people determined whether or not those beans tasted anything like the real thing...
      • According to Modern Marvels, when making the Vomit flavor, they used an old rejected Pizza formula, added extra pepperoni, and just a hint of citric acid.
    • Once on The Tonight Show, Rupert Grint and Adam Sandler were sampling an array of the candies, and Adam went straight for the booger flavor. He responded, "Doesn't taste like my boogers."
    • Most of them taste nothing like what they are supposed to; the Grass, Dirt, and Sardines flavors would be difficult to replicate in a jelly bean due to the fact that none of the three taste even remotely like they contain sugar.
    • The "rotten egg" beans also taste nothing like they're supposed to, on account of them containing what seems to be dimethyl sulfide (which tastes sort of like overcooked cabbage or broccoli) rather than hydrogen sulfide, probably because hydrogen sulfide is (more) toxic.
  • Ian Fleming was infamous for having taste in food so atrocious you wonder how he managed to make James Bond a connoisseur of such gourmet meals. One of his friends is quoted admitting to repeatedly telling him, "Ian, it tastes like armpits!"
    • James Bond also drink (if not smoke) enough to dull his nose and taste buds...
  • Milton Hershey, of the eponymous candy company, once created beet flavored ice cream for his hotel in Hershey, PA. This may have something to do with the fact that his sense of taste was destroyed by smoking 10 cigars a day for decades.
  • The Jones Soda Company sells a soda called simply Pink. The taste was somehow perfectly evocative of its namesake color.
    • There's also flavors such as Perspiration, Fun, Happy, Dirt, Natural Field Turf, Sweet Victory, Sports Cream, Bug Juice, Dave... This leads to the inevitable parody here.
    • Jones Soda made limited edition Dungeons & Dragons flavors too. Who knows what an Illithid Brain Blast tastes like.note 
  • Since Marmite is made from yeast, and since athlete's foot is a fungal infection, it's just within credibility for those who dislike Marmite to claim it tastes like unpleasant feet...
  • European travel guru Rick Steves reports in his guidebooks that he once went cheese shopping with a Frenchman who "took an orgasmic whiff, and exclaimed, 'Ahh... it smells like zee feet of angels!"
  • Limburger cheese almost literally smells like feet. And since taste and smell are highly interrelated: the cheese is made by using a certain culture of bacteria. In fact, it's the same bacteria known to cause foot odor. Additionally, the smell is close enough that Limburger will attract several kinds of mosquitoes - the species that specialize in feet and ankles.
    • Same applies to Raclette cheese. That cheese is used to make fondue, or something like it (the cheese is most often melted off with a heated metal tool, then scraped off onto the plate), although we should note that Raclette's odor is much weaker than Limburger's, and its most distinctive characteristic is the fact that it tastes bizarrely like beef.
      • Parmesan cheese, to some, also smells like stinky feet.
  • Animal feet are edible. Chicken feet is a common Chinese dim sum dish. When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States, some mention was made in the media that Puerto Rican-style pigs' feet with chickpeas was one of her favorite dishes.
    • In the Western world, jelly was originally made from gelatin derived from cow hooves. Calf's foot jelly (called feshnogge in Yiddish) is still an Ashkenazi Jewish delicacy.
    • Also, to this day, kawāri` — beef or sheep shin with the hooves still attached — are a famous and popular dish in Egyptian cuisine.
  • Cool Blue Gatorade. Even the people who make it can only describe it as "Blue".
    • On older vending machines you can see that it used to be Cool Blue Raspberry, but apparently, they gave up the ruse and just call it Blue now
    • Grape Kool-Aid can be considered this as well, as it can be described as tasting like purple.
    • "Red" is another (wholly artificial) flavor, found in drink mixes, Popsicles, etc. Kool-Aid calls the classic Red flavor "Cherry". Kool-Aid's Black Cherry (which is purple in color) is distinctly different.
    • This is true to the point that many people in the US military no longer refer to flavors, simply colors.
  • After first developing Gatorade (basing the composition on human sweat and adding lime for flavor), kidney researcher James Robert Cade had a Florida State player complain that it "tastes like pee". Cade took this input, went back to the lab to take a sample of his own urine, chilled it, then sampled it himself. He reported back to the player that "urine doesn't taste a bit like Gatorade."
  • For thousands of years, before the advent of chemical assays, physicians would diagnose certain ailments (such as diabetes mellitusnote ) by smelling and tasting a patient's sweat, spittle, and/or urine. If a doctor back then were to complain that his beer tastes like pee, he could've meant it literally.
  • Fermented soy literally smells like sweaty feet. It tastes about the same, too.
  • Sea urchin sashimi (uni) has been described as tasting a little like rockpools, presumably in a rotting seaweed-and-brine way.
    • If done properly, the first thing that comes to mind is "tastes like the seaside", with no rotting in the equation.
    • See also urchin roe sushi, which has the added bonus of having a consistency not unlike phlegm (which most of us do know).
  • The Chinese spirit baijiu (white alcohol), when sampled by Westerners, is usually compared to the taste of kerosene, gasoline, lighter fluid, or other petroleum distillates. Appropriate, because ethyl alcohol is sometimes added to gasoline or kerosene to help it flame up better.
    • Westerners who have been to Kenya and been brave and/or insane enough to sample the local moonshine, changaa, might know what they're talking about.
    • Also, the weakest baijiu is allowed to be is 40% ABV, or 80 proof (standard proof for most Western liquor); maotai (one of the more renowned forms) often clocks in at 53% (106 proof). Many other forms are 60% (120 proof), and a few forms, such as fenjiu and gaolangjiunote  can get up to 63% or 65% (126-130 proof), at which point they are literally flammable. When you remember that we actually do use alcohol for fuel... And at banquets, Communist Party officials are likely to take several drinks of baijiu, sometimes taken as shots (particularly if a toast is proposed). Suffice it to say that when it comes to drinking, the Chinese do not play games.
    • For those that get to do much international travel, White Lightning, the most common name for various forms of Appalachian moonshine, is often described as falling somewhere between vodka and kerosene, both in terms of taste and potency.
  • During a time when Harlen Sanders, the founder of KFC, was not on good terms with the company he had sold the rights to the restaurant chain to, they changed the recipe for their mashed potatoes. Sanders wrote in a newspaper article that they "tasted like wallpaper paste".
  • Came up at this entry of Not Always Right.
  • Anthony Bourdain was fond of using these, both in No Reservations and when he was a judge on Top Chef. He once told a cheftestant that his dish "tasted like a head shop."
  • In several places on this site, the rather vocal Hatedom of Foster's beer has described it as the urine of various different animals, complete with local variations. The Australians consider it cat piss, while the British think it's horse piss.
  • A number of mass-market American beers don't get off lightly either, sometimes being described as being piss, even by Americans. Horses and goats are the most common comparison.
  • Fans of Real Ales / Craft beers /IPAs know that said beers often vary greatly in taste. Some of them have particularly strong flavors and it's not uncommon to say it tastes like piss, especially if the aftertaste is salty and bitter.
  • And fans of Ossett Breweries offerings note  describe the beer - all the beers they brew - as having the taste of the world's nicest handful of gravel! Justified as Ossett used to be a spa in the late 19th - early 20th century .
  • Speaking of beer, an old style of beer common to Belgium is the "wild ale"; a saison or "farmhouse" style (so named because it was common at one time for every farmer to brew his own beer). Unlike most beers, which are brewed with cultured yeasts of the Saccharomyces family, Wild ales are brewed with wild yeasts, which also includes strains of Brettanomyces. "Brett" yeasts impart a taste which is commonly described as "like a barnyard, including the animals".
  • Virtually anything grape-flavored can be described as tasting very purple. Most of them taste nothing like grapes. At least one person has complained about grape-flavored cough syrup tasting like "death and the tears of small children".
  • A less specific real-life example. How many times haven't you heard someone describing something as "tasting like crap"? Most people have probably used a comparison like that themselves at some point.
    • Skatole, the substance responsible for the characteristic smell of feces, is (in a much lower concentration) one of the key components of some very pleasant smells like jasmine and orange-blossom, and a common additive to certain fruit-flavored foodstuffs. It is more likely than not that you have eaten something that literally tasted like crap and loved it.
  • Uncoated pills often have a (usually faint) smell that is very similar to wet paper towels; considering the correlation of smell to taste, it's not unusual for someone to claim the pills taste like wet paper towels, especially since they taste stronger than they smell.
    • Most prescription drugs tend to be somewhat unpalatable, but asthma sufferers who are old enough are likely to be familiar with the taste of Tedral (withdrawn from the US market in 1993), a mixture of theophylline, ephedrine, and phenobarbital that was supplied as uncoated pills that began dissolving the instant you placed them in your mouth and tasted like the concentrated essence of the Platonic ideal of the concept "bitter".
  • Joseph Mallozzi, former writer/producer for the Stargate TV franchise, has a blog on which he occasionally does a "Weird Food Purchase of the Day." Astronaut ice cream in Nov '10 got this reaction from writer Carl Binder; "It's like eating a shoe. Including the aftertaste."
    Mallozzi: What flavor did you try?
    Binder: Shoe.
  • Butterflies taste WITH their feet.
  • Durian fruit is said to taste like rotting vegetable matter or feet. Even people who like it disparage its odor; for instance, Anthony Burgess famously said eating durian was "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory."
  • Fish sauce can charitably be described as smelling like a combination of every odor the human body can produce. It's normally used as a seasoning or base ingredient due to its equally strong flavor, which gives a pleasant umami sensation when mixed with other flavors. Tasting the stuff by itself, however, is about as unpleasant as you'd expect.
  • Cilantro (coriander leaves to people outside the USA). Some people of Northern European descent have a variation to the genes that control their olfactory receptors, which causes it to taste very different than it does to people without the variation. The taste is commonly described as very sharply vegetal, and often "soapy" or metallic.
  • Chemists often have to resort to these when attempting to describe extremely foul-smelling chemicals, as most of these smells are more or less entirely unique despite their similarities to other smelly compounds. The descriptions can get quite interesting for some of the worst, like selenophenol being described as "6 skunks wrapped in rubber innertubes and the whole thing is set ablaze".
  • "Jus de chaussette", literally "Sock juice", is what French-speakers use to describe bad coffee, thanks to French soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War making their coffee by crushing beans with the stock of their rifles and boiling the result in a bucket or a tub, then filtering it through their socks.
  • An "oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport" - served at a Michelin star restaurant.
  • Canadian chewing gum brand Thrills was notable during it's heyday for tasting a lot like soap - to the point that they now try to capitlize on the nostalgia by labelling their packages "It still tastes like soap!"
  • Ants apparently think Trix cereal smells like death, since the cereal contains oleic acid, which is also given off by dead ants. This speculation was triggered when a donation of Trix to an ant farm triggered their funereal behavior, as described here.


Alternative Title(s): Tastes Like Feet

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Rachel's English Trifle

The Trope Namer. What's not to like? Custard good, jam good, meat good!

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