Happiness in a Bottle: Christmas Fir Cabin Spray by Juniper Ridge

Unseasonably cold temperatures across the country have triggered polar vortex memories that most of us would prefer to forget. It's an unfortunate association, but there's a sensorial antidote for the collective PTSD affecting portions of the country experiencing December weather this November; it's Christmas Fir Cabin Spray by Juniper Ridge

The product is the sixth in a series of "cabin sprays" made by Juniper Ridge and is described as "Christmas tree in a bottle". One spritz and you can say goodbye to forest-inspired scents that have been conning nostrils for decades. Christmas Fir Cabin Spray's fresh arboreal bouquet replaces memories of store bought fauxery with the soothing aroma of fir, cedar, and pine sourced from Mt. Hood. The product smells "real" because folks at Juniper Ridge go into the forest and forage for raw materials before distilling the ingredients by hand.

The scent of the forest belongs in the air which is why Christmas Fir Cabin Spray by Juniper Ridge is rife with Proustian potential. It's not a scent you have to learn; it's a scent you know in your DNA. Whether the memories are tied to gentle walks in the forest or Christmas trees lined up for sale, this olfactory creation is a righteous must-have at $30 a bottle.

Notes:
Image titled "Douglas Fir Variations" is comprised of four Creative Commons graphics. It was designed by Michelle Krell Kydd.  The images are (clockwise): Douglas Fir and Hemlocks, Coast Douglas Fir Cone by David Douglas, Douglasie by Petwo, and Abies Alba by Böhringer Friedrich.

This article was serendipitously posted on the anniversary of the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1913). A future Smell and Tell workshop that links scent, memory and literature is in the works for 2015. December's Smell and Tell is focused on Patchouli and takes place on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, from 7:00pm to 8:45pm at the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library. For more details click here.

Scented Memories: My Father's Leather Shop

When I was a child I would accompany my father to his leather shop on 236 West 27th Street in the garment district. The world changed the moment you walked into the freight elevator and were greeted with the scent of gear oil and metal. I remember the aroma of the shop which was a combination of leather, rubber cement, tailor's chalk, spools of thread, rolls of acetate lining, coffee, manila pattern paper, pencils, wooden cutting tables, rack and hand carts, metal chairs ornamented with handmade cushions, buttered rolls and bagels, and the warm metal of zealous sewing machines stitching away.

A flock of women from the Caribbean to South America worked there. I remember watching them change from their work clothes into street clothes and admiring how lady-like they were. The changing room was aflutter with slips, skirts, dresses, pantyhose and the staccato of Spanish conversation. The women were like butterflies. When they'd leave the shop you could smell traces of soap, hand cream and eau de cologne from Spain in the changing room. The soap was different from the one we used at home and smelled of citrus, cinnamon, and white flowers.

One of the women who worked in the shop was from Cuba and her name was Dulce. I remember how hard she worked and how beautiful she was. The sound of machines and hands working inside Brand X Fashions never leaves my memory. The video "Soul of a Shirt" captures the spirit of what I remember even though it's modern and related to shirt production (my father made coats, dresses, and suits in leather and suede).  

The building that housed Brand X Fashions now leases space to the Fashion Institute of Technology as a tenant. The 12-story deco sandstone building is across the street from the fragrance lab on 27th Street where I studied perfumery with Virginia Bonofiglio of FIT. On the first day of perfumery class I met Dulce Urquiza of Givaudan. We became fast friends and no matter how much time goes by she always reminds me of the Dulce I knew in my childhood. Both are of Cuban heritage and have an interesting blend of strength and sweetness; just like a perfect café cubano.

Notes:
The aroma of Swedish Dream Sunflower Facial Soap inspired this story; it smells exactly like the soap that sat on the porcelain sink in the women's changing room at Brand X Fashions.

The video that accompanies this post is curated by The Skyscraper Museum of NYC and can be found on their YouTube channel. My experience in the Garment District took place in the early 1970's. Though the video was shot from footage in the 1950's it affords an interesting historical perspective.  

The image of my father's business card is embellished with the wooden portion of a garment rack that was used to walk finished product to a contractor or distributor. I took a few rides in these as a kid and still remember how you could hear the sounds of the city mixed in with the rumbly bumps of the rack's wheels, which swiveled out of sync at short stops and cracks in the sidewalk. I was partially camouflaged by the garments and that made every ride a true adventure.

The picture of a vintage Singer® sewing machine was taken by Jorge Royan and was used with permission. It was remixed with an image my cousin took of the building where my father grew up. The building is in Brzeziny, Poland.

Image of "Leather Bouquet" featuring bolts of leather skins in bright colors taken by Michelle Krell Kydd.

Dulce Urquiza is Senior Creative Fragrance Development Manager at Givaudan and a chemical engineer; she puts the flower in STEM. A future story about her journey as a woman in science is planned. It is a precious story that has never been told before.

The Annette Green Fragrance Foundation Studio at The Fashion Institute of Technology is modeled on professional perfumery labs.

Flavor Stories: Dr. Roman Kaiser on Saffron's Affinity for Mullet and Shellfish

Shellfish and saffron have a natural affinity for each other. For some, the experience of savoring the flavor of a delicious paella is proof enough. Still, the desire to know why and certain flavors work so well together is enough to keep a curious cook up all night, or in some cases, inspire in a 2438 page corpus on molecular gastronomy.

Dr. Roman Kaiser is a renowned flavor and fragrance chemist who has dedicated his life to analyzing scents emitted by plants in their natural setting. Respectful of plant life and the environment he is known for utilizing dirigibles to conduct fragrance studies in locations including: Lower Amazonia, Papua New Guinea, India, and rainforest biotopes.

These days Dr. Kaiser can be found with both feet on the ground. He retired from Givaudan in 2011 and lectures at European universities. He spends more time doing things that he loves including foraging, canning and cooking; something he did in his youth as he spent a good part of that time in the hills and forests of Switzerland.

It isn't difficult to imagine a curious flavor story Kaiser shares from his childhood. As a young boy he added a few petals of Rosa centifolia from his father's nursery to a batch of homemade raspberry marmalade. The result was a memorable flavor pairing that inspired his pursuit of sensory science as an adult.

Last month I shared a recipe for parsley pesto with Dr. Kaiser via email and confessed that its success was the result of two unplanned events; accidentally buying parsley for a cilantro-based sofrito recipe and deciding to build a dairy-free pesto using the parsley as a flavor base.

I discovered that lemon zest and ground sumac temper garlic and parsley's assertiveness, creating multiple flavor complements. What I knew in the creation process as "instinct" is something I can now share as experience as there are clear reasons why this flavor experiment worked.

Lemon rind is not juicy, but if you add an umami enhancer like ground sumac berry you receive an added benefit; malic acid. Malic acid gives fruit a pleasant tart quality. In adding ground sumac berries to lemon zest one returns a sensory quality to lemon that is associated with a part of fruit that isn't present in the recipe; the juice-filled pulp. The effect is, in essence, a reconstitution of lemon's juicy character without the addition of water. The water forms in the mouth from the savory umami effect.

After sharing the recipe for parsley pesto with Dr. Kaiser he responded with a flavor story of his own. The event took place while he was dining at a restaurant on the Ligurian coast with colleagues (a story he relates on page 150 of his book Meaningful Scents from Around the World). If you're a home cook with a penchant for seafood and saffron you'll appreciate what Dr. Kaiser has to say about science and the role of a cook's instinct in the kitchen:

"...I would also like to describe a culinary insight. I was always wondering how the idea developed to add saffron to shrimps, prawns and red mullet. During a project at the Ligurian coast we once had lunch in a very simple but culinary-wise, wonderful restaurant where we could even see how the dishes were prepared. We had red mullet (rouget, Mullus barbatus) very delicately enhanced in its flavor with saffron, and I suddenly understood why they did this. 

The fresh red mullet itself already has a very faint saffron smell due to minute amounts of safranal and related compounds formed by degradation of carotenoids which gives the typical color to this and some other marine species, including shrimps. In fact, this faint saffron note is also perceivable in fresh shrimps and prawns, in which I have been able to demonstrate the presence of safranal by headspace trapping. 

Another fascinating example illustrating of how people are often able to do the right thing intuitively, in this case to support a very faintly present, but desirable olfactory note with a suitable spice.  

Dr. Kaiser's capacity for discovery defines him as a person and a scientist. These qualities make it a pleasure and privilege to know him. When I returned to read the passage about saffron and shellfish in his book, I found a note from Kate Greene, Vice President of Marketing at Givaudan. The note, written on July 1, 2008, was situated on page 152; one page ahead of the one Dr. Kaiser cited in his email to me. I must have used the note as a bookmark when I was writing about geosmin, a molecule that smells of freshly turned earth. Kate's note read, "On behalf of Roman, please enjoy his amazing book- it has given all of us much inspiration."

Meaningful Scents from Around the World has the approachable tone of an observational diary with a provocative scholarly flavor. It continues to attract readers because the human element in Dr. Kaiser's work, which is as much about curiosity as it is about science, is timeless. September 16th marks the eighth year since the book was published. Meaningful Scents from Around the World continues to inspire me. I have a feeling it always will...

Notes:
Details regarding Dr. Roman Kaiser's childhood discovery of rose-raspberry flavor pairing can be found in an interview conducted by Dyptique.

Dr. Roman Kaiser pioneered an aroma capturing technique in the 70's referred to as "headspace" trapping. This technique allows scent samples to be collected in the field without harming the plant.

Image of a dirigible from a ScentTrek® in Madagascar's Masaola Peninsula via Givaudan.

Image of a pint of red raspberries by Dan Klimke via Creative Commons.

Image of saffron threads by David Hawkins-Weeks via Creative Commons.

A big thanks to my husband, A.J. Kydd, who encouraged me to invent something new when I bought the wrong herb at the grocery store. It's nice to be reminded that mistakes and inconveniences are often opportunities in disguise.

"Inside the Olfactory Mind of Dr. Roman Kaiser" continues to be the most popular post on Glass Petal Smoke to date. It is part of a series of interviews regarding the sense of smell and memory.

The Unstoppered Bottle of Perfume

A perfume is known by its name, smell, shape and sometimes, its color. These attributes influence expectations in a perfume encounter. The unstoppered bottle is an invitation, a provocation, a dare, the gaze of a beautiful stranger that playfully intimates, "Would you like to get to know me?"  

Saying "yes" to the unstoppered bottle reveals an interconnected web of memories that belong to everyone and no one, intimate remembrances that reside in a compartment of the collective unconscious particular to smell. Scent can trill resonance, discord or a sense of the uncharted and does so against the backdrop of personal identity; it achieves this more affectively than any other sense.

Many hands are joined in the effort of making a perfume, but the terroir of human creativity is generally overlooked. This aspect rarely plays in the foreground because the eye's capacity for "knowing" is limited to what can be seen and we live in an ocularcentric culture. The unstoppered bottle releases the invisible which begs the question; what if it were possible to connect with the memories of those involved in the production of a perfume?             

Would the memories belong to the flower pickers whose fingers are capable of reading the coolness of dawn in the slip of a petal? Fingers that know the perfect tension in the snap of a bud plucked from its stem at exactly the right moment? Maybe the memories belong to the distillers who gather the flower pickers' handiwork and are incidentally perfumed by the essences they labor to extract. 

Perhaps the memories in the unstoppered bottle belong to a less agrarian figure, a technician whose hands rest in the pockets of his lab coat after he's carefully weighed and measured the ingredients for a new perfume. He stands at the lab bench reviewing a formula written by la maître perfumeur who is in the habit of composing immediately after she dreams. The technician knows the rich persimmon ink that never bleeds through the pages of the mauveine notebook to which she commits her formulas. The flourish of her cursive inspires contemplation and the sense that one is viewing an autobiographical dossier.














It is the memories of la maître perfumeur that infuse the formula most. Using aroma she regularly transforms the linear notion of time by fashioning a galaxy orbited by timelessness. This is most evident in her classic compositions, many of which shook off their dust decades after they were launched and were not touched by poor reformulation when their bouquets were reborn. 

Each of la maître perfumeur's fragrances is marked by a floral signature free of the pantomimes of nature one finds in modern perfumes that are designed to appeal to the many under the guise of the impeccable taste of the few. To smell them is to know her most intimate memories without the benefit of words. It is in this intuitive milieu that timelessness abides and it's as real to the technician as the logic of precision that guides his hands as he works. 

La maître perfumeur has her peccadillos, one of which is that she is occasionally discomforted by the use of mechanical automation that has become de rigueur at fragrance houses. When she looks at the glass-enclosed lab that contains the soulless compounding robot la maître perfumeur utters a soft curse under her breath. The curse reaches the technician's ears as he adds the final drops of jasmine absolute to a formula that won't need modification. He considers the word merde, which means "shit" in French, but it only fertilizes his efforts at the lab bench as he is working with an indolic jasmine.

Memory has yet to leave the flower picker, the lab technician, the distiller and the perfumer, but the day will arrive when time dissolves a few of their remembrances. Some will be spared significant loss of identity while others will have their essence extracted like a fine perfume absolute. The onset of memory's departure is unsettling and yet a shadow of its sunset is key to transforming the unstoppered bottle into a memory maker. One must be open to the "new" while forgetting preconceptions forecast by the experienced, the indifferent and the jaded. Detaching from likes, dislikes and odious comparisons paves the path of personal truth and it is to this experience that every unstoppered bottle is dedicated.

So the next time you encounter the unstoppered bottle, consider whether you will be the same person you were before you opened it, or if you will become a truer rendition of yourself in the hands of collective memory. 

Notes:
The first graphic that accompanies this post is a composite of two works from Wellcome Images: The first is of an illustration of a white magnolia blossom (Magnolia altifima) and its seed pod which was photographed by Mark Catesby. The second is an image of a model eye made by W. and S. Jones in London (1840-1900). The editor made additional embellishments.

The second graphic is an illustration fro m Hieronymus Burnschwig's Liber de arte Distillandi de Compositis (Strassburg, 1512). It depicts distillation.

Other images created by Michelle Krell Kydd. 

Maître perfumeur means "master perfumer".