Aftel - Fragrant : the secret life of scent

An engraving from the 1576 English edition of The New Jewell of Health symbolizes the art of distillation, which was used to extract essential oils from fruits, flowers, and other materials.

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Copyright 2014 by Mandy Aftel

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint lines from The Cinnamon Peeler, from The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje, copyright 1989 by Michael Ondaatje. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aftel, Mandy.

Fragrant : the secret life of scent / Mandy Aftel.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-61468-6

1. Smell. 2. Odors. 3. Cinnamon. 4. Mints (Plants). 5. Ambergris. 6. Frankincense. 7. Jasmine. I. Title.

QP458.A34 2014 2014018554

612.8'6dc23

The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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To Foster, my Philemon, from your Baucis

Aesthetics cures us of anesthesia. It awakens us.

MICHEL SERRES, The Five Senses

CONTENTS

The Boat of Foolish Smells, in a caricature engraving published in Josse Bades 1502 edition of La Nef des Folles (The Ship of Fools).

CHAPTER ONE

A NEW NOSE

Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.

PATRICK SSKIND, Perfume

gyptians emptied corpses of their organs and filled the cavities with aromatics to prepare them for the afterlife. Romans splashed doves with rose water and set them loose in banquet halls to scent the air. Marie Antoinette employed her own perfumer, Jean-Louis Fargeon, who created bespoke perfumes to match the queens many moods. People have feasted on aromatic materials, scented temples with them, offered them to guests. Whatever the vehicleflowers or food, incense or perfumepeople in every time and place have gone out of their way to exercise and indulge the sense of smell. Why? Because no other sense makes us feel so fully alive, so truly human, so deeply, unconsciously, and immediately connected with our memories and experiences. No other sense so moves us.

As an artisanal perfumer who works with extraordinary aromatic ingredients from all over the world, I venture deep into the fragrant world every day. And one of my greatest joys is bringing other people there, too, and watching as they immerse themselves in the experience. Scent is fun, sexy, visceral, transporting: it reminds us who we are and connects us to one another and to the natural world. Of all the senses, the sense of smell is the one that reaches most readily beyond us, even as it most powerfully taps the wellsprings of our inmost selves. It has an unparalleled capacity to wake us up, to make us fully human.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde portrays the deep, instinctive connection between scent and our unconscious thoughts and emotions:

And so he would now study perfumes and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily scented oils and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred ones passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots and scented, pollen-laden flowers; of aromatic balms and of dark and fragrant woods; of spikenard, that sickens; of hovenia, that makes men mad; and of aloes, that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul.