Julia Altshuler wrote:
>
> I'd heard about the smell so I approached cautiously and put my nose up
> to it. I couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary. Is it a deal
> where the odor is released when it is cut into?

Yes, but evidently there are some non-stinky varieties.

>
>
> I was dying to buy it to see what it was about, but my in-laws are
> extremely non-experimental when it comes to food, and I never would have
> gotten away with it.

When I read the descriptions below, all I could think of was "Why would
anyone want to eat it?" Sometimes experimentation isn't worth it.
There are so many delicious fruits that don't stink....

"There are some odorless cultivars but the flesh of the common durian
has a powerful odor which reminded the plant explorer, Otis W. Barrett,
of combined cheese, decayed onion and turpentine, or "garlic, Limburger
cheese and some spicy sort of resin" but he said that after eating a
bit of the pulp "the odor is scarcely noticed." The nature of the flesh
is more complex-in the words of Alfred Russel Wallace (much-quoted), it
is "a rich custard highly flavored with almonds . . . but there are
occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream cheese,
onion-sauce, sherry wine and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a
rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but
which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy;
yet it wants none of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It
produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the
less you feel inclined to stop." (The Treasury of Botany, Vol. 1, p.
435). Barrett described the flavor as "triplex in effect, first a
strong aromatic taste, followed by a delicious sweet flavor, then a
strange resinous or balsam-like taste of exquisite but persistent
savor." An American chemist working at the U.S. Rubber Plantations in
Sumatra in modem times, was at first reluctant to try eating durian,
was finally persuaded and became enthusiastic, declaring it to be
"absolutely delicious", something like "a concoction of ice cream,
onions, spices, and bananas, all mixed together."
from:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/m...urian_ars.html

-L.