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Not a lot of people like the smell of tar.  I could have chosen thyme or tarragon (like anise!) or any number of other herbs, flowers etc., but tar is the first thing that came to mind.  To me, it has a sharp clean smell and is related to the sea and sailing, one of the best things in the world to do. Tar and pitch are produced from coal, wood, petroleum or peat by a process of destructive distillation, which I won’t get into.  It results in an odoriferous mixture of hydrocarbons and free carbon, and historically tar was pine-derived. It played a major role in the economy of colonial America and especially of my home state, North Carolina, because in the days of wooden sailing ships, tar and pitch were was used to preserve the wood against rot and destruction from ship worms.  North Carolina was called the tar or turpentine state and originally North Carolinians were derogatorily called tar boilers. Nowadays, Carolinians in general, and the University of North Carolina sports teams specifically, are called Tar Heels.  There are several stories about how this name came about. One is that the troops of British General Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War were fording what is now known as the Tar River when they discovered tar had been dumped into the stream to impede their crossing. When they finally got across the river, they found their feet completely black with tar, and the soldiers observed that anyone who waded through North Carolina rivers would acquire “tar heels.”  The most familiar explanation derives from the time of the Civil War.  During one battle in Virginia, the North Carolina troops held their ground while others retreated.  When asked why they held, they said they had tar on their heel, which made them stick in the fight. 0 0

Betcha no one is going to pick sweat for the S! I actually like the smell of well-earned sweat and particularly that of a man.  There is something rather sexy about it.  Or maybe I’m weird. Sweating or perspiration or diaphoresis is the production of fluid by two types of glands in the skin of mammals.  One type, the ecrine glands, is found in the skin all over the body and is the primary source of sweat.  Sweat is mostly water, but it also contains sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and a variety of trace metals. Our primary means of thermoregulation, the control of our body temperature, is via the evaporation of our sweat. The other type of gland, apocrine glands, also release pheromones, odorless chemicals which alter the behavior of the one smelling them.   A lot of animals have anal glands, which are of the apocrine type. Ever wondered why dogs sniff each other’s rear ends? It’s a means of identification through the secretion of the anal glands! Humans have some vestigial remnants of anal glands – aren’t you glad we don’t identify ourselves this way? 0 0

Only seven more days to go in this challenge! Thanks to everyone who stopped by.  Your comments have been interesting and all the blogs I’ve visited have been instructive, amusing, interesting, informative, novel, thoughtful, colorful…my readers can add more adjectives! 0 0

I’ll bet you didn’t think rain has a smell, but I’ve always smelled something delightful with a fresh rain. There is a word, petrichor, derived from the Greek (petra, meaning rock, + ichor, meaning fluid that flows in the veins of gods), for the scent of rain on dry earth.  Now two Australian scientists, in an article for the journal Nature, have discovered that the smell comes from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods and absorbed by the earth and rocks.  During a rain, the oil is released into the air along with a bacterial by-product to produce the distinctive smell.  Rain also absorbs ions and thus can smell of ozone in a thunderstorm. Lots of science for the wonderful fresh odor of rain. 0 0

Thanks for stopping by! Quince jelly was a staple in both of my grandmother’s homes.  I liked its taste, sort of like pear or apple, but only lately have learned about the fruit the jelly is made from.  A quince is a highly fragrant  fruit, depending on where it is grown and the species, with the odor supposedly reminiscent of (depending on where you read): pineapple, guava, apples, vanilla and/or flowers.  I can’t distinguish between those scents myself, but apparently ancient traders claimed that one ripe quince could perfume an entire caravan. The quince is a member of the apple and pear family  and was apparently first used as a flavoring in meat stews; it can be stewed slowly in a tangine with meat and dried fruits.  It traditionally been used to make preserves, and I discovered that the word marmalade is derived from the Portuguese word mamela, meaning quince. Gotta get myself some quince jelly, maybe at the Farmer’s Market in Raleigh this year. Or maybe try to make some myself. 0 0

I love the smell of onions cooking. It makes me feel homey and strangely peaceful, not sure why. Onions figure into almost all of my main dishes, and I miss them when they’re not there.  The best smell of onion is when our grass is being mowed. Our lawn is seeded with them, so along with the wonderful odor of fresh grass, there is always a whiff of onion.  These grass-bound wild onions (Allium) are perfectly edible, too. The leaves, flowers and stalk are all fine, and they can be used any time a store-bought onion is called for.  I pick them every summer for salads and, if you’ll pardon the pun, feel like I am performing an act that goes back to our roots! 0 0

I love peaches and had never eaten a nectarine until I was in my 30s.  A nectarine is basically just a fuzzless peach, the fuzzy skin governed by a single allele of their genome. Nectarines are slightly smaller and supposedly a little more aromatic than peaches, and I’m transported by the ripe smell of both.  Any way you look at it, if you like peaches, you’ll like nectarines. Peaches came from Persia (present day Iran) and from there migrated to Europe, and were brought to North America by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. Here is a recipe originally made with peaches but equally good with nectarines. SWEET AND SPICY NECTARINE (PEACH) SUNDAE (From the Magnolia Grill, a wonderful restaurant in Durham that closed this year)  4 servings 1 lb frozen sliced peaches, thawed (can used diced fresh peaches) 1/3 cup sugar 1 ½ tbsp prepared hot pepper jelly (I use quite a bit more, since it is not spicy with this amount) 1/8th tsp ground cinnamon 1/8th tsp cayenne pepper (I used hot pepper flakes) 8 pecan shortbread cookies, crumbled Breyer’s peach or vanilla ice cream ½ cup whipped cream Bring peaches, sugar, hot pepper jelly, cinnamon and cayenne pepper to a boil over medium heat in a 2 quart saucepan. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring frequently until peaches release their juices and are heated through. Cool to room temp. To serve, arrange 1 crumbled cookie into each serving dish, top with peach sauce, then ice cream. Sprinkle with remaining crumbled cookies and drizzle on more peach sauce. Garnish with whipped cream. 0 0

Thanks to everyone visiting my blog! Coming from New England, I have to have maple syrup around: it is one of life’s wondrous staples and I love its smell.  There are lots of imitations out there, Mrs. Butterworth’s for example, but nothing beats the real stuff. Maple syrup is made from the sap of the sugar maple, red maple or black maple trees, according to Wikipedia. I never knew there were so many species of maple. These trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter and convert it to sugar (sap) in the spring.  The syrup is obtained by tapping the tree (boring a hole into the trunk) and hanging a bucket below the hole.  Heating the raw syrup evaporates much of its water content, leaving concentrated sweetness. Native Americans were the first to collect maple syrup and the practice was adopted by European settlers. Vermont is still the largest producer in the US, generating about 5.5% of the world’s supply. When I was little and we had a fresh snowfall, Mom gave us a bottle of maple syrup, which we poured on the snow, a quick dessert.  Today I’ll share a recipe for maple pumpkin pie that I found in a magazine a while back (apologies for not being able to cite it) and that makes my taste buds sing. MAPLE PUMPKIN PIE Serves 8 9 inch prepared deep dish pie crust in a pan 15 oz can pumpkin puree 1 cup grade B maple syrup 1 cup heavy cream 4 eggs 1 tsp cinnamon ½ tsp ground ginger ½ tsp nutmeg ½ tsp allspice Pinch salt   Heat oven to 350o. Place pie crust on cookie sheet.  Whisk together pumpkin puree, maple syrup, heavy cream, eggs, spices, and salt. Pour into prepared crust. Bake 50-60 min, until center is just set. Set on rack to cool completely. 0 0

The lovely smell of linden tree blossoms in the spring takes me back to Plymouth, where I grew up, and the old library where I spent so many happy hours reading.  The library, which has since been replaced with a big modern one, was an imposing two story block building with columns on a narrow street lined with old, old houses.  It was set back from the street and had four linden trees in front, two on either side of the walk leading to the heavy double doors. The library was a regular stop every Saturday morning for the whole family, and the children’s books were in the basement.  The basement room was cozy and had old diamond-paned windows through which came wobbling light, and it was a splendid place to spend a rainy morning reading books in one of the outsized (to me) comfortable chairs.  This is where I found the Narnia series which so enchanted me that I bought the whole series in hardback when I was a graduate student, for the children that would be 12 more years in the coming! Linden trees have such a strong tug on my memory and my heart that we recently planted one at our lake house. 0 0

Not many people would immediately associate kerosene with the letter K. But the 100+ year old house I lived in while growing up in Plymouth had a kerosene stove in the kitchen. My mother kept it fired up for slow cooking. The supply of kerosene for the stove was found in a large cylindrical container with a cap and spout that fit on the back of the stove, and it was my job to take the container down to the basement and fill it from a large drum we kept near the outside entrance. There were two rather nasty problems with this job, about which I complained heartily to no avail. The first is that I always got kerosene on my hands, and the smell of kerosene is not particularly pleasant. The second is that I had to go down into the basement. The basement of the house was deep, large and early on contained one of those huge octopus furnaces and delivered warm air through grates on all three floors.  Spooky. The good thing about the kerosene is the wonderful dishes my Mom would cook on the stove all day – beef stew, spaghetti sauce, chop suey, pea soup, boiled beef – the odors of those meals permeated the house and more than made up for the smell of kerosene I couldn’t quite wash off my hands for a day or two. 0 0