Smell - the underrated sense

Well that was what Catalyst was all about last night. And of course, they covered more than food, but there was really quite a lot about food, because, smell and taste, as you know - and as the diagram above illustrates, are closely connected. Take away your sense of smell and you cannot taste.

I was also thinking about all of these pop science programs that we watch - well, generally, half watch. They are interesting and entertaining, and they usually include a bit of the real technical science stuff, but it's the illustrations and the entertaining bits that you remember isn't it? Which is not necessarily a bad thing. One thing I remember from last night is asking people to squeeze their noses shut whilst they tasted various different flavoured sweets and then again normally. All of them could not distinguish the different flavours with their noses shut down as it were - just a vague taste of sweetness. Try tasting something like this.

And, of course, there are people with no sense of smell - they talked to one of these and she spoke about how it was all in the texture now. So she no longer liked fruit, which tended to be squashy and slimy, whereas vegetables were good. How awful not to be able to taste.

And, of course, the other major disadvantage of no sense of smell is that you cannot smell when something has gone off. If you remember, in my article on the 'use by date' I said that I chose to decide if things have gone off by their appearance and their smell rather than the date on the container. I guess if you have no sense of smell then you would have to go by the 'use by date'. Very wasteful I think.

The smell of certain foods is said to be a good real estate ploy. They recommend baking some bread or brewing some coffee for example when people come to inspect your house that you are selling, as these are said to be particularly tempting smells. In fact the smell of roasting coffee is one of those smells that I associate with my childhood - which is very peculiar because I am talking post-war England and I find it hard to believe that there was much roasting of coffee going on - particularly in East Ham in London's Docklands. But I definitely remember there being a shop in the town centre that roasted coffee, and the smell was just so exotic. I'm not talking about coffee brewing, but coffee beans being roasted.

For smell also is related to memory is it not? My instinct was to quote Proust and his madeleine, around which his whole huge book Remembrance of Things Past is built but then I thought it was the taste not the smell in the book. But then I found the quote (or one of them) and indeed he does refer to smell too.

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.” Marcel Proust

I cannot say that any other smell comes to mind to remind of my past, foodwise that is, but then the thing about smell is that it takes you by surprise.

There are other smells though - that remind me of places. Kipling, indeed, seems to think that some smells are the country itself.

"The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it." Rudyard Kipling

For me, the first time I visited Paris I was hit by the smell of Gauloises (a particular kind of French cigarette), garlic and wine. I also remember the smell of pine trees around the Mediterranean, gum trees in Australia, and some unknown but very exotic smell as I got off a plane in Beirut on my way to Australia.

But going back to food - there are some food smells that are just so good - even if not good in a healthy sense - sausage sizzles, bacon, fish and chips, the aforesaid bread and coffee - anything delicious cooking in the oven or on the stove really. And some are pervasive and linger - curry, onions, burnt anything ...

And here's a memory. David went out for a business dinner to a restaurant in Melbourne whose speciality is meat (and garlic). He had a sausage with what he thought was chopped onions, but which turned out to be garlic - masses of it. I could smell him before he came into the bedroom on his return. The car smelt for days - the boys asked what the smell was. And it took a while for the smell to leave his skin too - why his skin? Curry has that effect too does it not?