Even if you haven’t been formally introduced to **Mandy Aftel’**s transportative natural perfumes—from her small-batch liquid fragrances in their miniature glass bottles to her solid scents encased in reclaimed antique boxes—there’s a chance you’ve had an unwitting encounter with her popular culinary oils. Bartenders at PDT and Pegu Club, both in Manhattan, have incorporated the flavored essences into experimental cocktails; the artisanal ice cream whiz Jeni Britton Bauer uses them to churn out imaginative new flavors (vanilla cedar wood, wildberry lavender); and Daniel Patterson, the Bay Area chef who collaborated with Aftel on the 2004 cookbook Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance [Artisan], stocks several varieties—including coriander, wild sweet orange, and pine needle—in the kitchen of his two-Michelin-star restaurant, Coi.
Today, Aftel opens another portal into her olfactory domain, with the launch of her latest book, Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent [Riverhead]. Centered around five key aromatics—jasmine, cinnamon, ambergris, mint, and frankincense—it weaves together a powerful history of the senses. “People sailed around the world the wrong way just to get different aromas into their lives,” explains Aftel. In the spirit of those spice-seeking adventurers, she sets off on a sweeping narrative tour, exploring the role of scent in everything from Greek mythology and classic texts likes One Thousand and One Nights to its impact on modern medicine, and even flapper-era cocktails. Here are just five of the curiosities we learned from Aftel’s new book.
1/5Long before cinnamon became the unofficial titan of the spice route, it occupied a powerful perch: A Roman emperor had his crowns fashioned from the fragrant, russet-colored bark and covered in beaten gold.
2/5Incense has long been intimately entwined with ritual, from scenting the sleeves of geishas’ robes to easing souls into the afterlife. Remarkably, it was also used to measure time. Centuries ago, the Chinese developed a precise method for producing reed-like sticks with a standardized burn rate. When lit, the incense functioned as an olfactory clock—a way of smelling time.
3/5At the turn of the last century, mint farms began popping up in response to the burgeoning chewing-gum market. In Michigan, Albert M. Todd, an enterprising grower nicknamed the “Peppermint King,” started his experimental farms in the aptly named town of Mentha; his “Crystal White” mint oil was a hit—and seemed to presage the wave of toothpastes that followed.
4/5As proof that there’s truth behind even the oldest customs, a recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that the smoke of frankincense—that biblical magi favorite—helps relieve depression and anxiety in mice. (Wise men, indeed.)
5/5Finally, Aftel sets the record straight on a modern-day fragrance custom: To neutralize an overstimulated nose, forgo sniffing coffee beans, which can actually compound the problem, and inhale through a swatch of clean wool. Given the appetite for fragrance her book is sure to pique, it’s a tip to remember.
