Hopefully this isn't ASB but can this food become popular worldwide somehow? I like to see what people think of it. And how plausible can it be?
Natural revulsion can be overcome. Humans have a natural revulsion to inhaling fumes and drinking fermented beverages, as anyone who remembers what it was like doing so for the first few times can attest. Then there's eating visibly mouldy food.
Perhaps it becomes popular as something college students dare each other to eat at parties?
If durians struggle to be accepted wholeheartedly in East Asia, there is no way Surstromming can. And Surstromming is so much more intense than Durian, and globally popular?
I'm sure some will call this a cheat, but it gets the job done...
While rare, Stromming is a surname in the US. Through a minor butterfly of an otherwise irrelevant PoD, at some point early in the 20th C, the prefix "sur-" takes a nuance of superior.
In the early 20th C, a chocolatier by the name of Stromming is succesful enough to rival Hershy. Stromming chocolates become as well known globally as Hershey. Their top selling product is the SurStromming ("super Stromming") Bar...
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Surströmming is not even popular throughout Sweden, so it's going to have a lot of work ahead of it to be globally popular.If durians struggle to be accepted wholeheartedly in East Asia, there is no way Surstromming can. And Surstromming is so much more intense than Durian, and globally popular?
Massive global pandemic that inexplicably leaves Sweden virtually intact whilst wiping out the rest of the planet. The Swedish diaspora takes surströmming with it.Unless humanity is stricken by a virus that dulls certain senses to the degree that surströmming as well as Hakarl becomes the only foods that are considered to taste something...