Sense of smell in enjoyment of food:

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from NY Daily News

Reading an article in the NT Daily News about the sense of smell we all need to fully appreciate food and it, as always, raised even more questions in my mind to ask of you here at eGullet.

You have only to enter a kitchen filled with the tantalizing smell of a freshly baked apple pie, a loaf of bread or a warming stew to feel hungry and a measure of comfort....."Aroma" ( Daniel Patterson and Mandy Aftel; Artisan, $30) is an intriguing collaboration in which the chapters are broken down into nearly 30 ingredients that are divided into headings such as Refreshing, Spicy, Luxurious, Floral and Herbal. For each flavor, the authors present ways to use it in cooking as well as in a recipe for a body oil, perfume or elixir.

Is it the smell of a food which attracts you even before seeing it? Or is the visual equally powerful as a stimulant to you?

What happens when you are congested with a cold and can't smell anything? Appetite disappears? Do you merely eat out of habit?

Is the "look" of the presentation of a dish as significant in your enjoyment of the dish as the smell is?

[Pan]

Generally speaking, the smell is more important to me than the appearance, but there are things that smell bad but taste good, most of us would probably agree, so taste is really the final arbiter.

[Mooshmouse]

Ooof, nothing like having a cold to make everything taste like cardboard. Whenever I'm plagued by hayfever or any other nasal congestion, I tend to eat strong tasting or spicy food to compensate for the lack of olfactory stimulation. Or else I go the opposite way and eat something bland so that my tastebuds know that they're not missing out on anything much.

I'm pretty scent driven and could easily bathe in the scent of sauteeing garlic just after it hits the pan... nothing like waking up to the smell of freshly brewing coffee. Admittedly, however, I could walk past the window of a bakery or a chocolatier and be absolutely tantalized by the display without so much as a single sniff. C'mon, you can't tell me that those impulse-driven purchases of candy bars or bags of chips strategically placed near the checkout counter are motivated by the smell of junk food through their wrappers!

And I'm with Pan on smell being more important than appearance, but beautiful plating certainly makes me appreciate a good meal that much more.

[Fritz Brenner]

My partner used to work with a guy who was hit by a truck while on foot, put into a coma, and when he awoke with damage to his cerebellum and a restructured face, he had lost all sense of smell and taste. Apparently his only enjoyment of food (although he was never one to give too much thought to what he was eating) now comes from textures.

I have to say I would be really devestated to lose these senses. When I'm congested I also eat things with contrast, either textural or temperature-based...

[Sleepy_Dragon]

Reminds me of a documentary we saw in class a few months ago (sorry, don't remember the name), involving a girl who lost her sense of smell one day, and was given all these different flavored lollipops to taste. She said they all tasted like plain sugar.

Sounds downright miserable to me.

Pat

[srhcb]

A friend of mine was born without any sense of smell, and was 10-12 years old before it was diagnosed. He says he can recall wondering what people were talking about when they mentioned aromas and smelling.

His sense of taste is obviously altered too, but he became a pretty good cook by relying a lot on feedback.

[Hest88]

Yes, scientists have long known that the nose is where most of our sense of taste resides. As we get older and lose our sense of smell our appreciation of food can decline as well. Gawk!

[StudentChefEclipse]

My father, bless him, damaged his nose when he was fairly young. He enjoyed food and could even smell some of the more pungent stuff my mom cooked. But he couldn't really taste anything, and resorted to adding a layer of black pepper to his meals so he could taste *something*.

In school, we were taught in Basics and nearly every class after: Taste is 60% Smell. I am not sure it can be codified that way, really, but it does make sense.

[Fresser]

Now here's something handy I learned in high school biology: the human tongue can only distinguish four different tastes: sweet, salty, sour & bitter. The rest of our sense of "taste" comes from our sense of smell.

This is why we can't taste much when congested with a cold.

[snowangel]

This topic was touched on in the ECI course of cooking for and with disabilities --

click here

[gariotin]

This topic is a huge one for me - I've already detailed this on another thread, so apologies if you've already heard me whine. Long story short:

I'm a food professional, been in the specialty food importing and distribution biz for over 25 years. I had a pretty damn good palate, as a large part of my job is to taste and evaluate food to be able to sell it. Two years ago, while in NYC at the annual Fancy Food Show, I ate an H & H everything bagel at the hotel for breakfast. I have never been allergic to anything in my life before or since this incident. Within a half hour, I was in anaphylactic shock on the streets of NYC. I passed out, fell down and fractured my skull and have not smelled a thing since. Many MRIs later, the diagnosis is that all nerves coming from my brain into my nose were severed during the fall and will never reconnect.

I cannot begin to describe how hard it was to adjust to this condition. I went thru the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages of grief as I came to accept that I would never smell again. While I would not equate this to the loss of sight or hearing, it is much more fundamental than most of us are aware of - it is truly a sense that we take for granted. It taps into some very primal areas of our brain - hence the ability to conjure up memories from odors. I have lost that forever.

The hardest challenge, as you can imagine, has been the loss of my taste. On a scale of 1 - 10, I've gone from a 10 to a 1. I remember the subtlety, nuance, intricacies of food - but I taste only the four big groups. I have gained a lot of weight because I keep thinking I will get some satisfaction if I eat more - alas, not so! I used to love to cook and was quite accomplished - now I worry about entertaining since I don't really know if something is too salty, too spicy, etc. Wine is even a bigger bummer - if you can't smell it, you lose so much of the pleasure. Pleasure...that's what food used to give that gets lost when you can't smell.

Sorry to sound so whiny - you can tell that I'm still not totally adjusted to this loss. I still dream of smelling and hope I always will. In the long run I would rather be alive and not able to smell than the alternative. But I can't help but feel a bit akin to Beethovan - it's weirdly ironic that a person who makes their living from food would lose their sense of smell and taste. Life goes on...

[Randi]

This topic is a huge one for me - I've already detailed this on another thread, so apologies if you've already heard me whine. 

←

I did read your story on the other thread - it affected me deeply, and was thinking of you as I read this thread. Last year I lost my sense of smell for a very short time when I had a cold, and it was a miserable few days. It was a rude awakening for me - reaffirming the true joy I get from tasting things, and how dependent I am on my sense of smell.

I can't imagine living with that permanently, as you have to. I send you my sincerest sympathies.

[Hest88]

Ugh, Gariotin, you have my deepest sympathies.

[ghostrider]

My sympathies also.

If this is prying or causing you to dwell on a subject you don't want to dwell on, please simply ignore this question; but did you ever determine exactly what caused that allergic reaction? Remembering my extreme reaction to an apparent MSG overdose thanks to another thread here in this forum, I'm curious.

Edited September 17, 2004 by ghostrider (log)

[cinghiale]

Gopnik's article on wine (book review, actually) in the recent food issue of the New Yorker touched on the taste-smell interaction, and he had a fairly interesting point to make about the "weakness" of smell:

To make things worse, the nose turns out to have the shortest memory of all the senses. A simple experiment, Herz suggests, shows just how powerful nose amnesia is: think of a familiar tune—say, “Yesterday.” Now think of a familiar picture—say, the “Mona Lisa.” Now think of the smell of a tuna-fish sandwich. You can do the last, of course, but where the other sensory memories are strong, clear, and sharp, the tuna-fish sandwich smell is general and vague. What the nose knows, in effect, is not much, and that soon forgotten. (Wine lovers protest violently when they are told this, but their protest, from the academic point of view, is a bit like the protest of eyewitnesses who are sure they saw what they say they saw.)

[Hest88]

What the nose knows, in effect, is not much, and that soon forgotten.

Yes, but that has quite a benefit. Can you imagine eating chocolate after eating an tuna fish sandwich with your nose not being able to "forget" the smell of the tuna fish the way you can get a song such as "Yesterday" stuck in your head?

[cinghiale]

Yes, of course: smell paired with taste. I was thinking of smell alone, as was the question: "Is it the smell of a food which attracts you even before seeing it? Or is the visual equally powerful as a stimulant to you?"

Gopnik:

Smells, [Herz] reports, “are so malleable when it comes to verbal context that when reasonable verbal information is available it will override and even replace the olfactory information.” The effect is pronounced when the smells are, in some way, ambiguous—tell people that they’re smelling vomit, and they’ll smell vomit; tell them that the same smell is Parmesan cheese, and they’ll smell Parmesan cheese.

Sound and vision seem powerfully anchored in memory and are easily communicated to others. For instance, if you sing just the smallest bit of a well-known song, as little as "these little town blues", you and your listener recall "New York, New York" in all detail. When it comes to describing smell and taste, however, you have to go to linguistic extremes to convey only a modicum of understanding. Gopnik again:

When the French wine writer Eric Glatre declares, say, that in the aroma of a bottle of Krug “intense empyreumatic fragrances of toasted milk bread, fresh butter, café au lait, and afterthoughts of linden join in a harmonious chorus with generous notes of acacia honey, mocha, and vanilla,” he is suggesting that, of all the analogies out there, this might be one that expands our minds, opens our horizons, delights our imaginations. He is offering a metaphor, not an account book

[ghostrider]

Gopnik's article on wine (book review, actually) in the recent food issue of the New Yorker touched on the taste-smell interaction, and he had a fairly interesting point to make about the "weakness" of smell:

To make things worse, the nose turns out to have the shortest memory of all the senses.... where the other sensory memories are strong, clear, and sharp, the tuna-fish sandwich smell is general and vague. What the nose knows, in effect, is not much, and that soon forgotten. (Wine lovers protest violently when they are told this, but their protest, from the academic point of view, is a bit like the protest of eyewitnesses who are sure they saw what they say they saw.)

←

I think Gopnik is wrong, or perhaps misguided. How can he possibly know what my sensory memories are like? What he says is contrary to my experience.

More to the point, is it that the memory of aroma is weak, or is it that those memories are simply more difficult to articulate than those from other senses? Your later post seems to point in that direction.

It's an interesting question. I am blessed/cursed with a very keen sense of smell. There are certain aromas (including, unfortunately, the stench of the burning World Trade Center) that remain clear and fresh in my mind, even though it would take me a long time to find the words to convey their memory.

[gariotin]

I never did find out what caused the reaction - the folks at H & H were very kind and provided me with the recipe. I had allergy tests for every ingredient and came up negative. Knowing about the food business, I suspect they buy sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc in huge quantities. I could have come in contact with a mold or fungus I might never meet again.

I also disagree with this idea of the nose having a weak memory. Now that I cannot smell a thing, I can distinctly remember the smelly difference between a rose and a tuna fish sandwich. I still dream of smelling things and always feel cheated if the dream involves smelling gasoline rather than cabernet. I think it is harder to describe the actual experience of a smell - harder to put into words than music or sights. As for the memory - that's a whole other issue. I have learned that smell is our most primal sense - that the area of our brain where smell activates is one of the oldest parts of our brain. There is speculation that is the reason that smells can often spark an instant ancient memory of something you may not have thought of for years.

I think this all might have helped us develop as Homo Sapiens - smell was probably as important to us as it is to animals now in terms of finding food and food safety.

[jade]

well we taste with our eyes but smell is fab,blue cheese smells,but tastes wonderfull.i feel people who dine in decent/or any restaurant see a dish coming out the kitchen and judge by that,looks can be deceiving and so can smell.i have smelt great things which taste shit.

jb

[tejon]

The sense of smell makes such a difference in the way things taste. Back when I was in college I needed surgery to remove my tonsils. Prior to surgery, the ENT doctor poked around my nose, gasped, and asked, "how do you breathe?" Well, I had been breathing through my mouth my whole life. I then learned this was due to my extensive allergies, and that it could be fixed.

When I finally had the surgery, I couldn't eat much of anything for weeks. Everything tasted so incredibly wrong. Even favorites that I made exactly the same way I always had was terrible. Took me a while to figure out that I was finally smelling the food, and so fully tasting it for the first time. It took a while for me to get used to the new flavors and scents, but once I did I realized what I had been missing all those years. I am so glad now for the ability to smell, and therefore to really taste the things I eat.

[Kapuliperson]

for me it's the visual and the smell. I always smell food before I eat. Some of my friends and my mom find it annoying.

[bloviatrix]

for me it's the visual and the smell. I always smell food before I eat. Some of my friends and my mom find it annoying.

←

I smell everything too. But that's because I have scent hound DNA.

I'm extremely sensitive to smells. I don't care how good something tastes, if I find the smell offputting, I won't eat it. Scent memory plays a role in this, because if something smells bad while being made, but then smells good upon completion I still won't eat it.