aoife_mintin Citrus & Fresh · Cork ·
Tip
Small thing I picked up: the scent of a lemon sits in the coloured zest, the outer layer of the peel, where the oil is. The white pith underneath is just sponge. So when I practise I scratch the zest with a nail and leave the juice alone. The club's lemon…
dex_in_brooklyn this is why chef yells if you're digging into the pith with the microplane. bitter and zero smell
kit.clovein Seasons & Celebrations · Oxford ·
TipBefore the Christmas cake goes in, open last year's ground cloves and mixed spice. If they smell of dust rather than spice, the cake will taste of dust too.
ravi.tea Did this with my chai tin. The ground cinnamon smelled of cardboard. The club's page on cinnamon, where most of what's sold as cinnamon turns out to…
carys.cardiffin Florals & Bouquets · Cardiff ·
DiscoveryRead the violet page on my lunch break. Sweet violet was a favourite scent of the late Victorian period, yet true violet flower extract had almost disappeared by the late 1950s. The violet in a bottle today comes from ionones, a name taken from the Greek word…
aunty_val My mother's powder compact smelled like that, violets and something sweet. I never knew it wasn't the flower.
lupe.pinonin Home Fragrance & Candles · Santa Fe ·
Snapshot
First cold evening in Santa Fe and half the street lit their kiva fireplaces. Piñon smoke drifting low over the adobe walls, sweet, a little like pine sap on warm hands. Best smell of the year, every year.
hana.neroliin Wearing Fragrance · Vancouver ·
Memory
My aunt hosts small tea gatherings every autumn and asks guests to come unscented, so the roasted tea and the wet garden are all you smell. I used to find it strict. Now I think it's the kindest rule I know.
juniper_jules Same when we open the wood-fired kiln, nobody wants perfume over that first breath of hot clay.
ambrose_leatherin Wearing Fragrance · Northampton ·
Memory
Right then. My mother had a rule for my father's Sunday best: his scent should only be noticed when you shook his hand, never from across the chapel. One dab of cologne inside the collar and that was him done. I kept to it through forty years at the factory…
Class no. 11 · 7 min read
Fragrance keeps best in the dark, somewhere cool, at a steady temperature and with as little air as possible, because light, heat and oxygen change it. You will know where to keep your bottles, how to spot one that has turned, and what the open jar symbol on some boxes means.
beatriz.londonin Citrus & Fresh · London ·
QuestionMy grandmother in Porto always said: no lemon on your skin before the beach. Is it the same with bergamot?
nell.wattle Okay, nerd moment: for the pressed oils, your grandmother was actually onto something. The club's bergamot page, on its phototoxicity explains that…
aoife_mintin Citrus & Fresh · Cork ·
QuestionQuestion from a beginner: is every citrus oil pressed out of the peel, or do some get distilled?
dex_in_brooklyn it's all pressed, you squeeze the peel and the oil sprays out. you're overthinking it
ash.and.emberin Learning to Smell · Calgary ·
QuestionWoods and smoke are going fine since I joined. Flowers still all smell like 'flower' to me. Where do I start?
ingrid_berlin Start with orris. Half root, half powder, close to wood. I wear it since two years. /Ingrid
jess.in.phillyin Wearing Fragrance · Philadelphia ·
QuestionI work the front desk at a dental office, so people stand right next to me all day. Right now it's two sprays of a soft musky scent on my neck before I leave home, and by ten I can't smell it at all. Is two too much for a small waiting room? Too little? I…
big_dan_vetiver Three of us share a portacabin office at the warehouse. One spray on my chest, under the shirt, and nobody's ever said a word either way.
ambrose_leatherin History, Bottles & Houses · Northampton ·
Discovery
Right then. I always knew Grasse for its flowers, but the encyclopedia article on Grasse says its perfume trade grew out of leather tanning in the 12th century, that scented gloves were made there for Catherine de' Medici, and that a corporation of…
kit.clove Old bindings in the workshop smell of hide, paste and something faintly sweet. I always wondered where the sweet came from.
dario.bergamotin History, Bottles & Houses · London ·
Discovery
My grandfather grew bergamot near Reggio and always said cologne was an Italian idea. I checked: the encyclopedia entry on eau de Cologne says it was created in 1709 in Cologne by an Italian perfumer, Giovanni Maria Farina, as a light citrus scent in diluted…
frankie.incense That same entry says 'cologne' is now a generic term, most often for men's fragrances in American English, which definately explains every aftershave…
Class no. 10 · 7 min read
To wear fragrance well, spray it from a short distance onto clean skin or a fabric that won't mark, don't rub it in, and stop before your own nose asks for more. You'll learn where to put it, how much to use and why you stop noticing your own scent while everyone around you still can.
frankie.incensein Florals & Bouquets · Chicago ·
ReadingFun fact, with a source: in cold enfleurage, as Wikipedia's article on enfleurage describes it, fat was spread on glass, flowers were laid on it and replaced again and again until the fat was saturated. That scented fat, the pomade, was then washed in ethyl…
juniper_jules Fat drinking up scent sounds more like bisque drinking glaze then anything I'd call chemistry.
priya.cardamomin Florals & Bouquets · Toronto ·
ChallengeThread of the week: a rose, without the word. 1) Find a rose, a bottle of rose water, a rose soap, anything you have. 2) Describe it in one line without saying rose, petal or flower. 3) Guess what the person above you was smelling. Mine: cardamom chai with a…
mo_from_leicester Guessing Priya has rose water from the kitchen. Mine: a wedding hall at midnight when the garlands start to wilt, sweet and a bit like old tea leaves.
fern.mossin Learning to Smell · Swansea ·
Question
Popped into town out of the rain to smell a few things and there was a little pot of coffee beans next to the testers. Does sniffing coffee really reset your nose, or is it just a nice idea?
petey_pepper Pretty sure it works. Coffee is so strong it wipes out whatever was there before, like a palate cleanser.
ravi.teain Everyday Smells · Brisbane ·
Discovery
Making chai every morning, I finally noticed the cardamom smells a bit metallic when I crack the pods, and the ginger is almost lemony. I thought my nose was off, but the cardamom note says spicy, aromatic, slightly metallic, and the ginger note says lively…
priya.cardamom Cardamom chai is how I ended up here, Ravi, so this made my morning. Try the pods three ways: 1) whole, 2) cracked, 3) in the pot. Over to you.