Why do chickpeas always stink so much after soaking them?!


Question: Give me 12 hours, and I'll come back to this.

It's crazy, I know. I've never made hummus from scratch without someone complaining bitterly about the smell. The smell after soaking is pretty awful. I will try to find out what the specific aerosolized metabolites are, in order to chase down why it is that soaked chickpeas smell so awful. :)


Edit: Just under the 12 hour wire! Ok, so this was an interesting study for me.

If you just start searching for chickpeas/garbanzo beans and smell, you don't get a whole lot of information.

It takes finding a chemical breakdown of the amino acids present in chickpeas (Cicer arietnum) and cross checking smells with amino acids to figure out where the stink is coming from.

Fortunately, two of the polyamines present in Cicer arietnum are so aptly named, you don't have to go far to figure out that they are the source of the most awful of smells.

Putrescine and cadaverine are the polyamines to blame. They are so named, because they are the main reasons why decomposing bodies smell so bad (reminiscent of "putrid" and "cadaver").

These polyamines are also part of what makes flatulence smell so bad, and they are present in a variety of legumes.

Apparently they are released into the water as the beans soften, and a little goes a very long way, in terms of stink.

I've found that most beans smell much worse once they've started sprouting, and an article below confirms that the presence of both putrescine and cadaverine are higher in germinating beans.


Answers: Give me 12 hours, and I'll come back to this.

It's crazy, I know. I've never made hummus from scratch without someone complaining bitterly about the smell. The smell after soaking is pretty awful. I will try to find out what the specific aerosolized metabolites are, in order to chase down why it is that soaked chickpeas smell so awful. :)


Edit: Just under the 12 hour wire! Ok, so this was an interesting study for me.

If you just start searching for chickpeas/garbanzo beans and smell, you don't get a whole lot of information.

It takes finding a chemical breakdown of the amino acids present in chickpeas (Cicer arietnum) and cross checking smells with amino acids to figure out where the stink is coming from.

Fortunately, two of the polyamines present in Cicer arietnum are so aptly named, you don't have to go far to figure out that they are the source of the most awful of smells.

Putrescine and cadaverine are the polyamines to blame. They are so named, because they are the main reasons why decomposing bodies smell so bad (reminiscent of "putrid" and "cadaver").

These polyamines are also part of what makes flatulence smell so bad, and they are present in a variety of legumes.

Apparently they are released into the water as the beans soften, and a little goes a very long way, in terms of stink.

I've found that most beans smell much worse once they've started sprouting, and an article below confirms that the presence of both putrescine and cadaverine are higher in germinating beans.





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