Nancy Balcom writes...
>I was contacted by someone with our state health department who
>was following up on a consumer complaint. The person and a
>companion ordered and ate orders of deep fried, breaded, whole
>belly clams, prepared on site. The person in question ate two that
>tasted (or smelled, perhaps) in his words, like "mothballs" or
>camphor....
>
>Has anyone ever run across this before or have any ideas of what
>might have caused this smell/taste in the clams?
Hi Nancy,
I haven't heard of mothball-tasting clams, but your account
reminds me of what happened some decades ago in the small college
town where I grew up. A batch of chicken feed got contaminated with
mothballs or the like. The eggs were said to have tasted terrible.
I never had any, but our neighbor, the poultry science professor,
said that they tasted just like mothballs!
Again, this may or may not have any relevance to your
consumer's complaint.
Best regards,
George Chang
Univ of Calif, Berkeley
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 24 2003 - 11:59:55 PDT