French neighbours mistake grilled belacan smell to be rotting corpse

If asked,” What was your worst kitchen failure,” what would your reply be?

No matter how hilarious or ridiculous your answer is, you probably would not have expected this…

In a tweet that asked, “What was your worst kitchen failure?”, a Twitter user @notorioustapir answered his own question by saying, “Mine was putting cold keropok lekor into too hot oil and created an angry oil volcano. (sic)”

Among all the answers, one stood out particularly, stunning people with its amusing yet  shocking answer.

The user, @thezulfo, twitted in malay, which translates to “This is the experience of my friend’s wife who resides in France. She was excited when she received belacan (shrimp paste) and wanted to make sambal belacan, so she grilled the belacan in her apartment. However the (French) police knocked on her door to investigate when they received a report from her neighbour saying that there was a stench of a dead body emanating out of her apartment.”

He added,” My neighbour called the police because the smell was odd, and it was something they have never smelt before. So they told the police that there might be a dead body in the apartment as it smells pungent.”.

His tweet gained a whopping 21,000 retweets and 11,300 likes and netizens could not help but share their amusement on how the delectable and much loved sambal belacan could be compared to the smell of a dead body.

Though amusing, it is true that belacan does gives off a pungent smell when roasted. The fire intensifies the flavour which can then be used to make sambal belacan – a southeast asian chilli dip.