A sensational but frequently overlooked organ

Nouf Al-Qasimi

• Last Updated: November 17. 2009 3:50PM UAE / November 17. 2009 11:50AM GMT

Smell and taste are intimately linked, which is why olfactory studies play an important part in food research. Javier Larrea

My friend and I are in a café, where we order iced tea. When it arrives, I bring the glass to my mouth and plunk it back down. “Is something the matter?” asks my friend. “Smell this,” I whisper conspiratorially. “It smells like fingers.”

Sensitivities to certain smells are thought to be hereditary. The ability to detect the aromatic bitter almond top notes in cyanide is genetic. Like apprehensive little Pavlovian puppies, my siblings and I follow our noses for olfactory and adrenal revelations embedded in every spoon, glass and morsel of food. Smell is my favourite sense, and I’d gladly give my eye teeth before I’d cut off my nose to spite my face.

“Dude, smell my spoon,” my brother demands. I take it from him and sniff. “Pretty bad,” I affirm. “Pretty bad.”

Later that night, I meet my sister for dinner. She takes a seat at the table, lifts her fork and draws it beneath her nose. It’s a barely perceptible move that would probably go unnoticed by her friends, but I know what she’s doing. We smell everything we put into our mouths. People know that the senses of taste and smell are inextricably connected, but the value of scent in our lives is not fully appreciated.

In Jacobson’s Organ, the writer Lyall Watson says that the book’s eponym, also called the vomeronasal organ, consists of two small pits anterior to the nasal septum with nerves feeding the most primitive part of the brain. Watson describes it as a “chemical clearing house for subliminal impressions... bad vibes, warm fuzzies, instant dislikes and irresistible attractions”.

The 18th-century naturalist Carolus Linnaeus identified seven classes of smell: floral, goatish, musky, foul, spicy, garlicky – and nauseating. I like milk. I like eggs. I like chicken. I’m not allergic to any of them. But the smell of any of them in an unheated state when not absolutely fresh will send me dry-heaving to the nearest corner. Worse yet is their residue on glassware, flatware and silverware.

I once volunteered for a non-profit organisation that prepared meals for disabled people using donations from a food depot, which meant working primarily with produce and canned goods past their prime. One day, I entered the walk-in refrigerator to find 20 crates of surplus eggs. Many of the eggs were cracked, and albumen bled through the shells like vitreous marmalade. The icy chamber felt like the last room I’d ever see; my knees buckled and my eyes rolled heavenwards. I stumbled out into the sunshine and ate nothing but quinoa for a week.

In the end, I got the vindication I thought I needed over a bowl of house-made vanilla ice cream at a formal lunch in Beirut. Kamal Mouzawak, supertaster-cum-culinary brain behind the Souk el Tayeb, dipped his spoon into the ice cream, took a bite, cringed, and then quietly set the spoon down. “Avoid the ice cream,” he warned. “It’s miznikh.”

In Arabic, the adjectives “zinikh”, “miznikh” and “zinkha” are derived from the noun “zankha”, which essentially means rancour. But the concept of zankha is far more elusive than that, and, like love or raspberries, it is something that needs to be experienced to be recognised.

This powerful instinctive sensory reaction is less about allergies and sensitivities than a knee-jerk revulsion in response to the smells of certain animal products prone to rapid spoilage. A similar concept to zankha, “malansa”, exists in the Philippines, and Farsi has a word for the particular smell of a dish after it has been in contact with raw eggs but not sufficiently scrubbed.

How to go about describing the smell of zankha? Think globulin proteins; think of the damp bacterial smell of a meat refrigerator about 10 degrees warmer than it should be; think of a classroom full of children nursing colds, a wet dog, sticky metal (such as the smell on your fingers after you’ve handled a few dirham coins), the smell of the scummy grey foam that floats on the surface of a simmering stock, and the smell of low tide. It smells like a mortuary and its evil stench-tentacles latch on to plates and cutlery that have been through many cleaning cycles.

Certain smells are inarguably unpleasant, and much less subtle than the smell of a glass of cold milk. When the Japanese first encountered westerners, they were revolted by their potent body odour, the result of a diet higher in animal fat. Butter was thought to be the culprit, and the Europeans became known as bata-kusai or “butter-stinkers”. The term is still used to refer to anything considered excessively and offensively western. Some body odours with social and cultural implications are merely the result of diets too heavy in certain spices, such as cumin.

In my clinical work, I have seen practitioners who are able to diagnose patients merely by walking into the treatment room and inhaling. There is no doubt that certain conditions and treatments produce distinctive smells. The smell of ketoacidosis on the breath of a diabetic is often compared to that of rotten apples. Some medications can make a person smell rusty or even sweet, and, often, detoxing can smell truly horrid.

Since writing last week’s column, I have been sick with H1N1, the swine flu virus. With my sinuses plugged, I cannot taste much, so my appetite is relatively poor. But despite my Berlin wall of mucus, I can still smell the raw egg in my Caesar salad – and not in a good way. I didn’t eat it, and I love Caesar salads, including those made with (fresh) raw eggs.

What can I say? I inhale. We sense with scents. The nose knows.