FIVE SENSES

Here is Part Two:
in which How to Save the World temporarily sets aside the cares and fears of the day and indulges in some essential education, and then offers a savory segment of prose of somewhat questionable, er, taste. The item pictured at right is a taste bud, so cool your imagination.

iv. [smell] — chemistry lesson

From  jitterbug perfume by tom robbins:

Tangerine seems to work ok as the top note. It aerates rather quickly, but it rides the jasmine and doesn’t sink completely into it. With a middle note of jasmine, what we need is a base note with a floor of iron. It can’t just sit there, though, it has to rise up subtly and unite the tangerine somehow with that bodacious jasmine theme.

From  perfume-products.com:

Scents are classified as notes based on their olfactory character. Top notes are those that are detected and fade first providing freshness to the blend. They are light scents that are usually citrus or grasses lasting 5-10 minutes. Middle notes are those that last several hours and are the most prominent within the fragrance. These are usually combinations of spicy, floral or fruit scents. Base notes give a perfume depth, last the longest and are generally animal or woodsy notes. A perfume is a unique mixture of top, middle, and base notes designed to give a particular harmony of scents.

Perfumes generally fall into several families based on the dominant note. These include spicy, leather/tobacco, woody, mossy, citrus, floral, and oriental, any of which may be formulated for men or women, although florals are not generally used in men’s fragrances. The floral scents of jasmine and rose are used in most women’s perfumes. Many of today’s fragrances contain vanilla or a synthetic form of vanilla. Most men’s fragrances contain patchouli, and musk or synthetic derivatives are used in most fine fragrances.

Essential oils are aromatic and highly volatile substances isolated from plant materials. Numerous extracts, each one having a distinctive character, are used in combination to formulate a fragrance. There is some overlap in tones or notes with some of these scent extracts. Some such as rosewood and ylang ylang have middle to base character and clary sage and fennel have top to middle character.

TOP – Cajaput, cardamon seed, basil, bergamot, citronella, coriander, eucalyptus, ginger, grapefruit, lemongrass, lemon, orange, lime, marigold, peppermint, petitgrain, sage, spearmint, tangerine, tea tree.
MIDDLE – Ambrete seed, black pepper, carrot seed, cassia, chamomile, cinnamon, clove, fir, cypress, juniper, marjoram, melissa, neroli, palmrosa, pine, rose, rosemary, thyme, yarrow.
BASE- Amyris, anise, angelica root, clary sage, fennel, geranium, lavender, lavandin, balsam, cedarwood, frankincense, jasmine, myrrh, patchouli, rosewood, sandalwood, vetivert, ylang ylang.

Carrier oils are used to dilute and carry the fragrance for use as a perfume. Carrier oils come from nuts and seeds and are usually pressed out of commercially produced crops. The best carrier oils are stable to oxidation and have little or no fragrance of their own. The best choices of carrier oils are sweet almond, apricot, grapeseed, peach kernel, sesame seed, soybean, sunflower, avocado, wheatgerm and jojoba. Some of these oils can be used as the only carrier while others are only safe for skin use at 10-25% of the total. Wheatgerm oil should be avoided in those people with a wheat allergy and soybean oil can cause acne, allergic reactions or hair damage. Alcohol is added to perfumes to carry the fragrance by evaporation as well as dilute the ingredients. Perfumes contain 25% fragrance and about 75% alcohol and other diluents (carrier oils) by volume while cologne is composed of more than 90% diluent. Greater amounts of perfume concentrate translate into a longer lasting fragrance that needs to be reapplied less but at a higher price.

Fixatives are scented components that act to hold the fragrance together and regulate evaporation rate for the fragrant components. The fixatives often provide a base note and character to the mixture.Ambergis is found in tropical seas or on the shore as a concretion from the intestinal tract of the sperm whale. It is a gray to black waxy mass, very high in cholesterol and oil, with a characteristic odor. Ambergis has been in use since the 6th century. Civet is a semisolid, yellowish to brown, unpleasant smelling substance from anal glands of the civet cat. The isolated component civetone, produces a pleasant musky odor when used in extreme dilutions. It has been in popular use in perfumery since the 10th century. Musk obtained from plant and animal sources or by chemical synthesis adds a persistent musky aroma. Natural sources include the musk glands of the male musk deer, muskrat, and ambrette seeds.

The powerful “odour-memory-emotional recall” connection is called the Proust effect from his description “that sweet aroma released the vast structure of recollection”; a Scientific American study paraphrased this as “scent evokes a powerful and visceral remembrance, a rare experience of simultaneity”. Women generally have a much stronger sense of smell than men, though sensitivity varies throughout the menstrual cycle; the leading hypothesis is that this conveys selective procreation advantage as women sense and select as mates men whose antibodies (which emit distinctive smells) complement their own.

v. [taste] — guess

when i woke up i was blindfolded, and tied, déshabillé , with silk scarves, to the corners of the four-poster.

i’m going to give you ten things to taste. you have to describe each of them using purely the language of taste — sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. if you need help, remember that sweet tastes strongest at the tip of your tongue, sour at the sides, salty in the middle, and bitter at the back. in your description you can compare the flavour to other flavours, but if you use tactile, visual or any other sensory descriptions, the tasting is over. are you ready?

okay [laughing]

here’s number one. stop laughing and open your mouth.