Perfumed Viands

In this country, we tend to distinguish sharply between perfumes and flavoring aromas (the big exception is citrus scents, but even then, perfumes tend to come from the blossoms, rather than the fruits). For instance, you’d probably think it odd if somebody used vanilla as a perfume. But why not?

Likewise, a lot of people are obscurely offended by the Middle Eastern practice of flavoring sweets with rose water (which was also a European--and American--practice as late as the 19th century). The problem is really in their heads. They wouldn’t object to tasting a plain pastry near a rosebush.

If they only knew how much serious, hard-core perfume has flavored edibles over the centuries. Ambergris, a scented substance formed in the stomachs of whales, is a basis of perfumes today; it’s particularly valued for its ability to “fix” certain scents so that they’re effective in perfume. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, some people liked to stick a bit of ambergris in the bottom of coffee cups to scent their coffee.

In the middle ages, Middle Eastern cooks sometimes flavored dishes with musk, that funky extract of animal scent glands that goes into many perfumes today. According to the medical theories of the day, it had a “warming” quality.

Often, particularly in flavoring pastries and chicken dishes, musk was paired with camphor, a crystalline substance derived from a cousin of the bay tree. Camphor’s penetrating aroma suggests cold, so partly they may have been hoping to balance the warmth of musk.

But camphor was also used as a flavoring by itself, so medieval people evidently liked the aroma for its own sake. One reason why we might not go for it today is that it makes us think of certain soaps and deodorants, and particularly of mothballs.