Club circle
Vanilla, tonka bean, cinnamon, incense: warm perfumes and edible notes.
The Ambers, Spices & Gourmands circle welcomes lovers of warmth and sweetness. Members talk about vanilla pods, cinnamon sticks, burning resins, cocoa, coffee and the perfumes they bring back out as the days get shorter. Post a spice from your cupboard, a question about the difference between amber and ambergris, or a pastry memory. The amber fragrance family gives you the landmarks.
20 posts · 26 active members
dex_in_brooklynin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · New York ·
Scent diary
ok so pastry left a tray of cocoa nibs by the flat-top tonight. Raw they smell sour, almost like red wine, then a couple of minutes near the heat and it's toast and brownie edges. you're never smelling just one thing on a line
teddy.tonka Sour then brownie edges, yes!! Green coffee does the same when we roast a sample.
frankie.incensein Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Chicago ·
MemoryFun fact: Rachel Herz's review of odor-evoked memory says the memories a smell brings back tend to come from the first decade of life, and feel more emotional than ones cued by words or pictures. That's definitely me. The choir started planning the Christmas…
lupe.pinonin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Santa Fe ·
Discovery
A neighbour back from a trip gave me a little bag of frankincense tears. I only knew it as church smoke. Unlit, a tear smells like lemon peel and pine sap, nothing smoky at all. I warmed one on a tin lid over the stove and the church came straight back.
frankie.incense Fun fact: the first perfume-maker anyone can name is Tapputi, recorded on a Mesopotamian cuneiform tablet dated 1200 BCE [I definately want to know…
amara.oudin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Birmingham ·
Memory
Revising late and someone down the corridor is burning frankincense. Straight back to Eid at my aunt's, oud on the coals and everyone's coats smelling of it for days.
hamish_heatherin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Edinburgh ·
Challenge
Aye, here's a wee challenge. In the shop, folk who come in call half the casks 'vanilla' and stop there, as if the word did the job. Split a vanilla pod or open your extract and describe it without saying sweet. It's dreich outside, so I've had time: damp…
dex_in_brooklyn wet tobacco and the inside of a cigar box. you're not getting sweet out of me
joon.yuzuin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Seattle ·
Scent diary
TL;DR: coffee and cocoa both get their smell from the roaster, and my nose still mixes them up. Rainy Seattle Saturday, so I set out three jars: - roasted coffee beans: toast, nuts, a little smoke - cocoa powder: dusty, chocolate, slightly sour - cocoa nibs…
otis_in_nola Add chicory coffee. Roasty but bitter like burnt toast, nothing like cocoa.
aroha.rainin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Wellington ·
QuestionKia ora, benzoin keeps popping up in the amber threads and I've got no idea what its like. Sweet? Smoky? Piney? Nothing like it in the bush round here as far as I know.
kit.clove Warm vanilla with a bit of dust, to me. Like the paste pot in the bindery on a cold morning.
teddy.tonkain Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Austin ·
DiscoverySmelled a tonka bean straight after cupping this morning and it has the same toasted almond thing as a fresh roast!! Mind blown. Back to lurking.
kemi.cocoa Toasted almond is how I'd describe tonka too. Put it next to a vanilla pod and the almond gets even louder.
nell.wattlein Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Melbourne ·
Discovery
Okay, nerd moment: the scruffy grey shrub by the school veggie patch, the one every kid calls the curry bush, is immortelle, Helichrysum italicum. A Year 9 crushed a leaf this arvo and asked why it smelled like a takeaway, so we looked it up. The club's page…
mo_from_leicester I sell curry powder all day and I'd never have guessed a plant could smell of it on its own.
dex_in_brooklynin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · New York ·
Questionok so the cinnamon on the line is cassia, the thick bark, and pastry swears by the thin curly Ceylon stuff. you're telling me a nose can tell the difference?
kemi.cocoa Same smell to me, honestly. Isn't it all just cinnamon?
priya.cardamomin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Toronto ·
TipSmall tip now baking season is here: your spice drawer is already a smelling kit, it just needs organizing. 1) Pull out cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger and nutmeg. 2) Line them up by which one you can still smell at arm's length. 3) Smell the quietest first…
ravi.tea Did it with my chai tin. Clove won the arm's length test by a mile.
priya.cardamomin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Toronto ·
Exercise
Thread of the week: cardamom, two ways. Most of us have pods and a jar of ground cardamom in the cupboard, and I'm not convinced they smell like the same spice. 1) Crack one green pod and tip the seeds onto a saucer. 2) Put a pinch of the ground stuff on a…
ravi.tea Did it before work. Fresh seeds: sharp, nearly minty. Ground: dusty and sweeter, like the bottom of the tin.
frankie.incensein Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Chicago ·
ReadingFun fact, with a source: Wikipedia's musk article says nearly all the musk used in perfumery today is synthetic , and that trade in the natural stuff, from the male musk deer, is regulated under CITES. The same article sorts the lab musks into nitro…
jess.in.philly The lab kind is my whole personality. Warm cotton straight out of the dryer, and then I stop noticing it by lunch.
ambrose_leatherin Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Northampton ·
Memory
Right then. Our foreman in the clicking room smoked a pipe at break, and his tobacco smelled of hay and marzipan, nothing like my dad's roll-ups. I never knew why until my granddaughter put a tonka bean under my nose on Sunday. Same smell, near enough. The…
bev.boston My late husband's aftershave had that hay and almond smell. Now I have a word to look for.
kemi.cocoain Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · London ·
Snapshot
Wet Sunday in London. Apples from the school harvest table in a crumble, cinnamon, and one clove because Mum always put one in. The whole flat smells like her kitchen.
ravi.teain Ambers, Spices & Gourmands · Brisbane ·
Scent diary
Brewing chai with the back door open, spring's properly here in Brisbane. Fresh grated ginger hits first and then vanishes, cardamom hangs around, and the black tea only comes up once the mug is nearly cold. Same order every single time.
joon.yuzu TL;DR: that's basically a fragrance pyramid in a mug. The club's page on ginger as a bright top note says it mostly works up top, among the…