Tasting & Smelling

SMELL & TASTE EXERCISES
 exercise Explore your room/apartment/house/hut systematically for smells. Note down 50-l00 smells and try to describe them in a couple of words. Can these smells be organised into groups under one of the suggested classification systems. This initial exploration will give you plenty of information on where to find smells for doing the following experiments. It will aIso give you a most extraordinary odourful mental plan of your house.

 exercise Explore Environment

A. Visit a derelict lost in which a variety of plants are growing. Make a systematic map of predominant smells using graph paper and a key. Attempt classification.

B. Visit Woolworths. Go systematically around all the counters and smell everything. Take notes. If you are glib or surrepticious enough to avoid being escorted from the shop after a short while-this will prove most insightful. What smells were inate and which added.

 exercise The personal associations and mental effects of smells Sit with a particular smell within effective range. Meditate upon its associations and note them down. Then further involve yourself with the sensation and notice any psychic effects - does it elevate or depress you? Enter the smell and live in its world.

 exercise Touch/taste discrimination

A. With a small spoon drop a dollop of syrup: onto the tongue. Is it the slippery feeling or the sweet taste that is first perceived?

B. Put a very little pepper onto the tongue. Pinch the nostrils. Is there a taste separate from the irritation?

C. Experiment with other edibles. list them, and note the components of the sensation that they give. Repeat these exercises for 10 days, with one or two days rest, then note improvement.

 exercise Sweet Two glasses of water are sweetened equally. Ask a friend to add a measured and minute amount of angasturas bitter to one glass Now try and say which solution is then made sweeter by the addition of the bitter. The bitter may be increased until a difference in sweetness is perceived. The extra sweetness should be'noticed before the solution tastes bitter.

Repeat every day for ten days excepting a day or two 'off'. Note improvement.

 exercise Flower Smell In spite of the extensive neglect by horticulturists, in maintaining the fragrance of a large number of cultivated flowers, there is still much pleasure to be had from the aromatic garden. Wallflowers, Cottage pinks, Flowering Tobacco, Sweet William, Alyssum, Heliotrope, Violet, Rose, Acacia, Lily of the Valley and Lavender are good examples.

Put half a dozen fragrant flowers on the table before you. Pick up each flower in turn, and savour its scent. Then with your eyes closed shuffle the blooms about, and then taking each one separately try to identify it by its smell. Afterwards reconstruct these smells in your imagination, relating each to the flower to which it belongs - after Pelman.

Repeat for ten days, with rest.

 exercise Extracts Obtain a range of extracts, perfumes, essential oils, flower essences etc. Take two of them at random. Inhale the odour of one. Do the same with the other. Then moving away from them, think of the first smell- then think of the second. In your mind compare them, noting the difference. Repeat with different kinds of extracts (in pairs).

Do this for ten days, with rest.

 exercise Detail Differentiation Take a particular category of taste/smell and sample 6-10 varieties. If these may be sampled simultaneously - as in the case of cheeses - note the unique characteristics of each sample. Then arrange it so you may sample each without seeing it - of course it is difficult to hide cheese textures - and guess which it is. If several may not practicably be tested simultaneously, as with bottles of wine - although wine tasting parties are a good excuse to do this - then make notes on the taste at the time. Then compare your notes and memory of this taste with the next.

 exercise Sensitivity Using essences; find the smallest amount that you can detect by putting a drop into a pint of water. If you can smell it, dilute with another pint of water and throw 1/2 of the solution - ie. 1 pint - away. Repeat dilutions until smell is no longer detectable. If one drop is not detectable add more drops and count them. Repeat for 10 days with rest, making a graph of your results. Why can you smell better on some days than others? Does your sensitivity increase by the tenth day? Repeat with different smells. Compare results.

 exercise Comparative Analysis Arrange to be presented with a pair of smells. Identify the two individual smells. If they cannot be named try to describe them. If the separate character of the smells cannot be discerned ask for the name/description of one of the pairs. Does this help guess the other? What smells are easily distinguished? What smells merge? The selection of smells for this exercise are best selected over a range - as suggested by the classification mentioned in the context-and paired in roughly equal strengths. For the advanced osmologist. Try 3 smell combinations and from your notes decide which smells are most elemental.