Yuck
↓ Transcript
STEVE: Okay, well, now I'm curious. How'd you like to try this with that popper?
STEVE: Raspberry Chipotle. Don't under estimate it because it sounds sweet. The sugars bind to the spicy oils, and makes an edible napalm.
STEVE (VO): How brave are you REALLY feeling?
SELKIE: Yoink!
AMANDA: You know that's spicy fruit, right?
SELKIE: Yeah, but he's talkings it up a lot. Ands Mister Pohl says I should be eatings a bit of plants to toughen up, so why no--
SELKIE (VO): Oh, BLEARGH! Ugh!! Too sweet!
TODD: What did we learn?
STEVE: Raspberry Chipotle. Don't under estimate it because it sounds sweet. The sugars bind to the spicy oils, and makes an edible napalm.
STEVE (VO): How brave are you REALLY feeling?
SELKIE: Yoink!
AMANDA: You know that's spicy fruit, right?
SELKIE: Yeah, but he's talkings it up a lot. Ands Mister Pohl says I should be eatings a bit of plants to toughen up, so why no--
SELKIE (VO): Oh, BLEARGH! Ugh!! Too sweet!
TODD: What did we learn?
Sweet things taste like hot garbage to sarnothi
I’m wondering how she knew about hot. She warned Amanda about the jalapenos. Chilis of any type are plants. How would she know what spicy is?
Similar question: can sarnothi taste capsaicin “heat”? The reason it’s spicy to humans is because it mimics a neurotransmitter used by our pain nerve endings. Different species use different neurotransmitters for different things, so whether chili peppers are “hot” varies from species to species.
Also: obligate carnivores tend to have extremely simple flavor tasting ranges in general, since they don’t need to detect much other than “how fatty is this?”, or “is this meat rotten?”. It’s kind of interesting that Selkie can taste “sweetness” at all.
The question of what flavors sarnothi can taste and why seems innocuous, but actually kind of raises all kinds of connected questions and inferences about their physiology and evolutionary history.
Sarnothi don’t react to capsaicin, it’s why her reaction is “ugh, sweet” insted of, “ow, hot”. Even their version of “sweet” is different from us. What we think of as sweet flavors tends to taste extremely bad to them. Brown sugar bacon, for example, would taste to them like someone covered the bacon in something vile.
I don’t think anyone reacts to the capsaicin in chipotles, so that doesn’t say much other than that you’re the comic’s creator. 😉
Chipotle sauces are what you use when you want something smokey-sweet that has little to no kick. if the goal is “napalm,” take it up a few steps to…hm…a pequin would be good for that. Might be a little much for an 8/9-year-old though. It’s a delayed heat that just kinda kicks you out of nowhere, then fades pretty fast.
For someone who isn’t a spice fiend, a serrano-based sauce or some low quality habaneros (habaneros can be more sweet than spicy depending on the pepper) would be a better choice. Serranos are a pretty good middle-of-the-road pepper for kiddos. Think a jalapeño but stepped up a notch. Though some better quality jalapeños can give lower quality serranos a run for their money, too. Adding a bit of citrus enhances the kick, not sweetness. In fact, sweetness is how you DAMPEN spiciness.
Either way, if the goal is something that is “napalm” in quality, chipotle sounds horribly unrealistic.
Your scale is way-high up into my inedible range. What you describe as chipotle, is what I use for Ancho. I love poblanos, but Jalapeños are just to burn-owwwah!! for me. If different varieties work differently then that would describe my problems with some and not others.
Television. She’s seen sitcoms and cartoons where people eat peppers then explode or catch fire, and she gets the general concept of “these foods cause pain”.
That makes sense. 🙂
Pfft chipotle isn’t hot, it just tastes bad.
Seriously, though, “edible napalm”? Who on earth considers chipotle hot? That stuff is, like Selkie said, too sweet (kinda smoky, too).
Midwesterners.
I love the flavor of chipotle. And straight chipotles do have a fair bit of heat to them (and I’m a pepperhead).
And napalm is an apt comparison. It may not be that hot by itself, but if it’s stuck to you, there’s no escaping it.
IIRC, mammals have capsaicin receptors but birds do not. Has it been established before this whether Sarnothi have them?
Does this imply that Sarnothi are featherless dinosaurs?
…Please don’t give me excuses to rewrite my entire canon.
I mean, there’s some small evidence that humans were evolving towards a semi-aquatic lifestyle before we became plains-apes… wouldn’t be too far a stretch to imagine some raptorids moving to the water after the KT event.
Aquatic dinosaurs existed, but did not have gills. Like whales, seals, penguins, and sea turtles, they had to come up for air periodically. Evolution does not bring back features that were completely discarded from the lineage. If the Sarnothi evolved on earth, they branched off from amphibians hundreds of millions of years ago.
It’s a comic strip. If Dave wants her to taste sweetness, she can taste sweetness. Doy. If he wants her to have poisonous saliva, she has poisonous saliva. It doesn’t matter if carnivores or birds can do so, it’s not the real world. He doesn’t have to justify anything.
Oh sure, if you want to take the Doylist perspective. Us Watsonians would rather have a facy explanation involving the evolutionary path of Merfolk wizards.
What do you mean it’s not the real world? I just had lunch with my Sarnothi coworker yesterday. Not sure what weird parallel universe you are reading from. But hey if you want to see what that poisonous saliva can do, feel free to tell my coworker he’s not real. He’s a good guy but kinda got a temper ya know?
Some sweet things taste very much like that to me as well.
I HATE caramel with a passion, but butterscotch is okay, even though I’ve been assured those tastes are quite similar (and similarly derived from brown sugar and butter).
I’m fine with varying degrees of spicy, be it Asian or Latin American spiciness, but sweets vary WIDELY and WILDLY to my tastebuds.
I like raisins, though.
I also LOVE Code Red Mountain Dew.
I hate almost everything with vanilla in it though.
Chocolate is not preferred, though okay as a wrapper for things like peppermint.
I assure you that I am, at least nominally, human.
Agreed, can confirm, different spices react differently with different people. My Mate doesn’t like bitter foods, I love bitter foods, but what each of us have on the list as bitter, leads to battles.
Bitter, bitter, battles….
Bravo sir, bravo
ISTG when my youngest does something and injures himself I give him the SAME LOOK and ask him :Did we learn our lesson?
A lot of times it’s a giggling no XD
In panel one, the contents of the cup are colored the same as his hand, not purple like in the rest of the panels.