Scent sensations

The other day a friend gifted me a cute, teddy bear-shaped soap. It was only when I opened the packaging that I was hit by a gorgeous fragrance of milk and vanilla that I found to be hugely comforting. I think it is meant to be a ‘baby soap’ but it has nonetheless, brought me much pleasure as it scents my bathroom.  I don’t remember as a child ever having a special soap but over the years, I’ve shared enough baby bath times for that ‘powdery’ smell to make for happy memories. We know that smell – more than our other senses – evokes powerful emotions and helps define a sense of place. Yet reading about the science of scent, it seems that we understand less about it than the other senses and how we distinguish smells remains a mystery. We do not know how smell is ‘written’ in smelly molecules. Odorants have to fly to get to our nose but encoding them is still somewhat of a mystery – hence fragrance chemists making thousands of combinations in order to find, and replicate, just the right one. When I was growing up, I became accustomed to my Father smoking and so the smell of cigarettes didn’t enter my consciousness. Yet when I first went to France, I remember scent of Gauloises and could not imagine that by then, smelly old cigarettes could smell so exotic. Today, on the last day of September, I’ve enjoyed the musty, woody scent of warm sunshine on fallen autumn leaves. We may not have enough words to describe smells as we do our other senses but scent sensations are precious in our lives.