Voracious anosmiac

There are the super tasters in the world (who are usually super sniffers as well given the correlation between smell and taste) and then there are those like me who can hardly smell a gas leak right in front of them.  I’ll never be someone who can smell what type of deoderant you’re wearing but I’m okay with that.  Maybe it was one too many French inhales from my smoking days.

My poor sense of smell is the great irony behind me liking to cook and eat as much as I do.  But hey, Beethoven wrote masterpieces as a deaf man, and Ben of Ben and Jerry’s co-headed an ice cream company as an anosmiac, or, a person who suffers from a loss of smell.

When I first read about Ben Cohen, I had an “aha!” moment.  Apparently, Jerry, his business partner, created their characteristically chunky, bold flavors with Ben in mind. Could the flavors and texture win over Ben’s muted smell and taste?  I am a hopeless devotee of Ben and Jerry’s, and my draw to bold flavors and textures, like Ben, is why — and I am totally self-diagnosing here — I think I, too, have signs of anosmia.  I always choose their chunky flavors, with each spoonful letting the ice cream melt in my mouth so I can gum and crack into all the tidbits that emerge.

I’ve always been a huge texture eater.  Chunky peanut butter all the way.  Give me seeds in my berries and chewy, chewy salt water taffy.  The popping of shrimp wigs me out.  I take a lot of pleasure (or displeasure) in the appearance and texture of the foods I eat and I wonder if that is a natural over-emphasis since I can’t smell a whole lot.

And yet, I still consider myself a good cook, although I’ve been told (especially earlier on in my experiments) that my food was too spicy, or some of the spicing was too strong.  I’ve tried to guess what might be considered a good middle ground by those eating my food.  I can certainly still taste, but I do wonder if I taste less than others since my olfactory sensitivity seems to be duller than most.  It definitely hasn’t curbed my eating, and enjoyment in eating.

One of my culinary instructors showed us a video about “super-tasters” who are almost overwhelmed by the smells and tastes they encounter, and I brought up that I have the opposite problem.  I asked if smell was something that you coud sharpen through training and he said he didn’t know.  I’m still thinking about that question, and whether there are answers.

As I’ve thought about my relative use of senses, I’ve thought about the natural variation that must exist between us as eaters and how those differences shape the pleasure we get from food.  How much of your eating is seeing? Touching? Hearing?

And then of course there’s memory.  Just because I may not be able to smell each spice coming through as it cooks on the stove, I can still look at my spice rack, know what all of those will taste like on their own, and combine them in pleasurable ways.  My food may never be delicate and subtle, but that’s just what it is — it’s food made by someone who conceptualizes taste, sees it, and feels it.

Just let me know if you smell my coffee breath and I can’t.