I’m not sure if it’s my favourite food smell but its certainly my favourite smell memory, It is Sunday evenings with my Dad making what seemed to me as a child to be hundreds on pancakes for our tea and a big pot of tea keeping warm in from of the fire before the feast with all the butter and sugar started, this memory is so clear that I can even hear the tune for Murder She Wrote in the background!!!
I love smelling my food, Its very important, my friends think I’m weird, I’ll pile the perfect amount of everything onto my fork and before I taste I’ll take a little smell and nod in satisfaction. I think at this stage it is habit and second nature to me but I knowingly smell everything before I taste it, even the everyday things like tea, cereal, sandwiches… I think I am a bit weird!!!
Niamh, I’m with you. I’m a “nose”, I smell everything, I taste food first with it. I always attract a few weird looks when I go shopping because I smell the food before I buy it, and it doesn’t stop at fruits: bread, meat, fish, cheese, you name it. I smell my plate before eating it, whether at home or out. I’m blessed, or cursed depending on what the smells are, with a nose that can detect the faintest of scent.
My mum was a dreadful cook, my memories of food as a child has to go to my grandmother’s kitchen and find a sun – ripen tomato drenched in olive oil. It’s when I learned to cook myself that I started to enjoy food, and my favorite smell of all is of bread baking. Oh, the smell of bread as I passed by the “boulangerie” in my years in Paris! Give me a freshly baked loaf any time over a cream cake!
As for the last meal, not being under pressure of health conscious choices or worries about digestion and so on, I’d really blow it: oysters to start with, with an indecent amount of fresh bread and butter, followed by roasted turbot with garlic butter (loads of), with asparagus and young broad beans, cheeeeeeeeeeses with more bread, a mango sorbet for pudding and a box of chocolates from Cocoa Atelier. With a glass of Puligny-Montrachet, thank you
The best smells are frying rashers, frying garlic and/or onions, chopping herbs like thyme and rosemary, grinding toasted spices like cumin and corriander, baking raisin bread with cinnamon, cloves and allspice, mulled wine, lemon zest… too many more to name!
Great article! I love the smell of the brown paper bag when you’re walking home from the chipper, the end of it all soggy with malt vinegar and chip fat. Always reminds me of growing up when, for a treat, my mum would send me and my sister to the chipper while she fried eggs and heated up baked beans. The smell of garlic never fails to get my mouth watering. And any sort of baking. Man, I am SO hungry now.
I love how everyone so far has had a real personal affinity with smell and food on some level.
Nanazolie you certainly know how to go out with a bang 😉 Rebecca, Méabh, I’m very much with you on the garlic front. The smell of the freshly peeled cloves, or the leaves in the garden, and nearly the best one, frying, is just so mouth watering. It never fails to prep me for a big feed.
Niamh, I think you’re very right to smell your food. It is one sense we forget to indulge ourselves in. We pleasure our sense of taste by eating, hearing by good tunes and sight by enjoying films. But smell… well there really is a whole world to be explored, I really do believe it!
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 10:41 am
I’m not sure if it’s my favourite food smell but its certainly my favourite smell memory, It is Sunday evenings with my Dad making what seemed to me as a child to be hundreds on pancakes for our tea and a big pot of tea keeping warm in from of the fire before the feast with all the butter and sugar started, this memory is so clear that I can even hear the tune for Murder She Wrote in the background!!!
I love smelling my food, Its very important, my friends think I’m weird, I’ll pile the perfect amount of everything onto my fork and before I taste I’ll take a little smell and nod in satisfaction. I think at this stage it is habit and second nature to me but I knowingly smell everything before I taste it, even the everyday things like tea, cereal, sandwiches… I think I am a bit weird!!!
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 11:13 am
Niamh, I’m with you. I’m a “nose”, I smell everything, I taste food first with it. I always attract a few weird looks when I go shopping because I smell the food before I buy it, and it doesn’t stop at fruits: bread, meat, fish, cheese, you name it. I smell my plate before eating it, whether at home or out. I’m blessed, or cursed depending on what the smells are, with a nose that can detect the faintest of scent.
My mum was a dreadful cook, my memories of food as a child has to go to my grandmother’s kitchen and find a sun – ripen tomato drenched in olive oil. It’s when I learned to cook myself that I started to enjoy food, and my favorite smell of all is of bread baking. Oh, the smell of bread as I passed by the “boulangerie” in my years in Paris! Give me a freshly baked loaf any time over a cream cake!
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 11:25 am
As for the last meal, not being under pressure of health conscious choices or worries about digestion and so on, I’d really blow it: oysters to start with, with an indecent amount of fresh bread and butter, followed by roasted turbot with garlic butter (loads of), with asparagus and young broad beans, cheeeeeeeeeeses with more bread, a mango sorbet for pudding and a box of chocolates from Cocoa Atelier. With a glass of Puligny-Montrachet, thank you
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 12:03 pm
The best smells are frying rashers, frying garlic and/or onions, chopping herbs like thyme and rosemary, grinding toasted spices like cumin and corriander, baking raisin bread with cinnamon, cloves and allspice, mulled wine, lemon zest… too many more to name!
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Great article! I love the smell of the brown paper bag when you’re walking home from the chipper, the end of it all soggy with malt vinegar and chip fat. Always reminds me of growing up when, for a treat, my mum would send me and my sister to the chipper while she fried eggs and heated up baked beans. The smell of garlic never fails to get my mouth watering. And any sort of baking. Man, I am SO hungry now.
Tuesday 30 August, 2011 at 1:45 pm
I love how everyone so far has had a real personal affinity with smell and food on some level.
Nanazolie you certainly know how to go out with a bang 😉 Rebecca, Méabh, I’m very much with you on the garlic front. The smell of the freshly peeled cloves, or the leaves in the garden, and nearly the best one, frying, is just so mouth watering. It never fails to prep me for a big feed.
Niamh, I think you’re very right to smell your food. It is one sense we forget to indulge ourselves in. We pleasure our sense of taste by eating, hearing by good tunes and sight by enjoying films. But smell… well there really is a whole world to be explored, I really do believe it!