joon.yuzuin Citrus & Fresh · Seattle ·
ExerciseFour citrus peels, eyes shut, two right
TL;DR: I blind-tested myself on four citrus peels and got two right.
Setup, if you want to copy it:
- four peels: lemon, grapefruit, mandarin, sweet orange
- each one folded over a paper strip, number on the back
- my partner shuffled them, I smelled with my eyes shut
Lemon and grapefruit were easy. Mandarin and orange I swapped, they both read as orange candy to me. The club's Class on training your nose with what's in your kitchen has a fuller blind test with the spice rack. Try it with whatever is in your fruit bowl this weekend and post your score. That's my two cents.
13 comments
aoife_mint
Did it with my housemates. Three out of four, I mixed up the lemon and a lime someone threw in to be smart.
dex_in_brooklyn
ok so I zest like forty lemons a shift and I still swapped orange and mandarin. you're not alone joon
thiago.berlin
In Brazil we say tangerina. For me mandarin is easy, it smells like my childhood, and the orange smells like juice from a box.
joon.yuzu
That's basically the word I was missing. Going in the spreadsheet.
aroha.rain
Did this with heaps of lemons off the neighbour's tree and one grapefruit, its spring here so the bowl is mostly lemons. Two out of three.
juniper_jules
Did it on the wedging table between throws. The grapefruit smelled bitterer then the lemon, like a glaze with too much iron in it.
ingrid_berlin
Lemon is all treble. Orange has more mid-range, that is how I separated them. Four of four.
maeve.moss
Here's a thing. I did it at the kitchen table with the rain hammering the window and my sister reading out the numbers and she laughed every time I sniffed so I lost count of the rounds. Mandarin I got, grapefruit too, so I did. Lemon and orange came out as one chord, two notes I couldn't pull apart.
nell.wattle
After a few rounds everything smelled the same to me, and that's actually a known thing. Wikipedia's page on olfactory fatigue describes it as a temporary, normal loss of the ability to detect a smell after long exposure, and your sensitivity comes back once you leave the area. So step outside between rounds, actually.
joon.yuzu
Same on my round three. New rule: one round, a walk round the block, then round two.
first.sniff
One right out of four. Trying again tomorrow with fresh peels.
hamish_heather
Aye, did it at the shop after closing with a wee satsuma and a lemon. Two out of two, I'll take that.
joon.yuzu
Round two done on Sunday, with a walk between rounds like nell said: four out of four. The orange basically smelled like juice from a box, as promised.