Location Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012
I accidentally left a pot on the stove with the plastic handle just a wee bit too close to the flames. Didn’t help that I was distracted by my mom showing me something on her computer. But I heard an odd “POP!” from the direction of the stove and thought “Wait, boiling water doesn’t go POP! Let me check that out…”
Did you know that melting plastic can glow that lovely ember red if it’s hot enough?
I removed it from the flames to let it cool. Luckily I was making couscous, which requires you to let it sit off of the heat after you boil the water and add the grains. So I didn’t have to restart my dinner even. The plastic didn’t deform in any way that will hinder the use of the pot, so the only negative part of this was the faint whiff of burning plastic that I noticed when I went to check out the popping noise.
Well, faint to me, at least. I stopped noticing it very quickly. My Mom was opening extra windows and doors and hoping that would help reduce the vile scent all through my meal.
You see, I’m anosmic.
I know, “what’s that?” Anosmia is the inability to detect scents. In other words, I’m nose blind. Tells you how important the sense of smell is if you have to describe it using a disorder in a different sense, and for that matter, have to describe it at all…
I go through life with very little to no sensory input coming from my nose. It’s really not that bad, all told. Sure, I can’t stop and smell the roses, but I also can’t stop and smell the garbage either. And my sense of taste is really strong to compensate. And food tastes exactly the same when I’ve got a stuffy nose!
Well, I guess I’m more, what, legally nose blind than completely lacking the sense. There are a few compounds my nose can detect. Usually they have to be in really high concentrations for me to notice at all, if I ever do. It’s an interesting list, though.
Apples. I can smell apples. It’s the only fruit I can smell, and I love the scent of baking apples.
Cinnamon. But only very faintly and only in high concentrations. Which is usually what you find it in, at least. Another reason for loving baking apples, since cinnamon is tossed in the mix.
Sulfur compounds. Yellowstone National Park was extra-interesting because I could actually smell the geyser fields, like the one in the photo.
Burning stuff. Especially campfires. So I don’t have to worry about not noticing if my house caught fire. I can also detect burning coal, and apparently burning plastic.
Hot water. Yes, it actually has a scent. It’s just a subtle one, but one I can notice. My increased sense of taste also means water has an interesting taste profile that actually changes a lot from place to place.
Scents I’m allergic to. I think these use paths a bit different than what few sensory cells I have. But I notice right off if I’m near someone smoking a cigarette, or wearing perfume, or cleaning things with chemical products. I do a sniff test for all cleaning products I am considering buying. If I get an instant headache from just one gentle sniff, I put it back on the shelf.
And… And… I’m sure there’s more…
Well, technically, there are. I can detect most scents if they’re really really strong. For instance, standing next to a turkey that’s fresh out of the oven and faintly detecting the scent of cooking meat.
As far as I can tell, I’ve been this way since birth. Usually people have one scent or another that brings back an old memory, but my old memories are tagged with sight cues or taste cues. It took me until the end of college to realize I was different than everyone around me in this respect, too, which I suspect would not be the case if I’d started out being able to smell things. The fact that I can detect some scents probably hid it a bit, since I have a concept of what smell acts like. In general, it doesn’t really affect my life.
Except in two ways.
First, I have to keep in mind a sense I don’t have. Imagine if most people could detect, say, auras around people and you couldn’t. But they kept telling you that your aura was unpleasant and could you please adjust it? How would you react to that?
For me, well, I have to keep in mind that showering is for more than just making me less itchy and also reduces body odor. Let’s just say I suspect not knowing about my anosmia was part of why I was in the “outcast” category in high school. I own a deodorant, but only remember to use it on rare occasions (usually if I’m dressing up for a special event.) For a little bit I tried using lavender perfume (the only one I’m not allergic to), but I don’t even know what that smelled like. I mostly have to wander around hoping my fumblings have made it so others aren’t distressed by something I can’t detect.
The second way is that my taste buds work differently than other people. For most humans, the sensation of taste is actually upwards of 90% smell. That’s why a blocked nose makes food taste boring. But for me, the actual taste buds compensated for the missing sense, and I have a very developed appreciation of food. It just doesn’t quite match other people.
For instance, hamburgers taste like cardboard to me. While I enjoy beef, it’s because of compounds in the blood and the like. I prefer my steaks as raw as I can get them, because the raw meat is what has the flavor to me. Grinding gets rid of most of the blood, removing most of what I like, and the flavors grilling imparts are almost all scent based. It’s similar with alcohol. To me it tastes like bitter water with a few hints of rotten fruit, whether it’s a fine wine or a common beer. Not that I’ve had beer. The taste of the alcohol itself is far stronger than the other flavor compounds, except for in the scent category.
On the other hand, vegetables taste awesome! I love the sweet crunch of a carrot or the rich nutty taste of roasted brussels sprouts. Just about all of the things that make people hate vegetables are on the scent side of taste. It’s really easy for me to eat a balanced diet. Though oddly enough, I don’t care for most fruits. Those tend to just taste like sugar to me, and I don’t like having that much sugar in my diet.
Put all together, the interaction of scent and taste is probably both why I love cooking and why I hate cooking for other people. I make the food to match my own particular mix of taste buds (and my love of spicy foods), but it only rarely matches the mix other people use. Certain cuisines are rather close, usually vegetable- or raw-food-loving ones like Mexican or Japanese, while others are just kinda boring to me, like Italian. Or American. As much as America has a cuisine, that is. And trying to compensate for a missing sense in something as personal as cooking just doesn’t work that well.
Which is why I’m going to head off and make a lovely veggie-rich chicken noodle soup with extra cranberries in it, and you’re not going to get any of it! Bwahahahaha!
