So, it's been a while! I'm very happy to announce that at last I have something to show for these years of near silence. It's a new book, to be published next month, and titled Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells.
Of course I write about food and drink, and in 2010 I began a book about flavor: the sensory qualities that make eating and drinking so pleasurable and interesting, and cooking so worth the effort. Long story short, I became especially intrigued by aromas, the most specific of these sensory qualities, and by the way that very different foods can have similar aromas. How is it that Parmesan cheese can suggest pineapple, a raw oyster cucumbers, a corn tortilla chestnut honey? And why is that some foods even evoke inedible things: green tea the smells of the seaside, wine the smells of a horse stable, some cheeses the smells of sweaty feet?
Echoes like these led me to sniff around oceans and barnyards and feet--and then, out of curiosity, around other smells that aren't obviously echoed in foods. I began to savor smells of all kinds the way I savor the flavors of food and drink, paying attention to their particular qualities, and wondering about their backstories. I soon found that smells can be clues to some of the world's otherwise hidden workings. So my book about flavor became a book about the smells of the world, not just the table. And the world is a big place. I had a lot to learn! That's what took ten years.
In Nose Dive I share what I've learned about the range of smells that are out there to be noticed, and what they can reveal of the things they emanate from. Tortillas and cheeses and teas of course, and wines and roses and eaux de Cologne, but also sodden flowerpots and blood, asphalt and laptops, old books and wet pets: a sampler of the myriad smellables that fill our lives.
Nose Dive will be published by Penguin Press in the U.S., Penguin Random House in Canada, and John Murray in the U.K., with Dutch and Spanish translations in the works. Here are some links for more information, and for ordering copies from a range of retailers, including two particular specialty bookshops that have been stalwart supporters over the years: in New York, Kitchen Arts & Letters, and in my San Francisco neighborhood, Omnivore Books.
Nose Dive at Penguin Press Nose Dive at Penguin Random House Canada
Nose Dive at John Murray Press, U.K.
