I’m fond of recalling a Len Deighton character who asked: ‘Do you like garlic?’ to get the reply, ‘Yes, but not secondhand!’
It figures, doesn’t it? The smell of frying onions is marvelous – but only if they are your onions! Gratuitous cooking smells are invariably noxious – an invasion of privacy; an assault on our senses, not to mention our clothes… no matter what the culinary outcome. Can you imagine anything worse than living above the kitchen vent of a three-star restaurant? I once knew a Spanish millionaire who had a duplex apartment off Berkeley Square in London’s Mayfair. But the public entrance was a Cape Horn of pungent Middle Eastern cooking smells – welcome perhaps in another context.
I guess for most of us, other people’s cooking smells (OPCS) can be an occupational hazard, pretty well wherever one lives – and especially in Summer when burger fumes from the neighbor’s barbecue waft over the garden fence.
Summer was a hazardous season for OPCS when I lived on the Cote d’Azur. Our fifth floor apartment had a long wide balcony with a fabulous view of the sea and two light houses; great for entertaining, especially as the kitchen opened on to the balcony. The bad news is that the whole side of the building came alive with chatter and conflicting cooking smells.
Imagine the scene.
‘Mmmmm,’ the lady says as you emerge with your guests on the balcony for aperitifs. ‘I can smell wonderful roast lamb; I’ll never forget the gigot you cooked when we last came round, when was it?’ She takes a kir royale (royally made with crème de mur as you know she likes it) and raises a smiling glass…
Actually, you had planned a cold lunch – a choice of terrines – terrine de campagne, terrine d’oie; terrine de canard, with garniture (sliced tomatoes; cornichons; those cocktail onions… Crusty pain de campagne. Dressed poached salmon with cucumber scales and mayonnaise, to follow; a nice brie, if anyone wants it; a mixture of fraises des bois (wild strawberries) and raspberries, and cream. And all washed down with a nicely chilled Sancerre. Then black coffee and a petit Calvados. Perfect; you’ve won your brownie points.
You’ll have guessed, of course, that the ‘roast lamb’ was gratuitously wrought by the demon cook on the third floor. Or was it the concierge?
As Shakespeare might have said: ‘On your olfactory senses work, and make imaginary puissance…’
Well, garlic takes a lot of beating – I have diabolical thoughts of a custom-made urn which wafts authentic garlic smoke in the way of recalcitrant neighbors. Or sardines delicately fried…
You get the drift?
Cooking is fraught with olfactory problems – and opportunities