You probably don’t realise, but smell is one of the most powerful of our senses and it’s also our most sensual. In all we can pick out a massive nine thousand different odours.Here are a few of the more stranger odours we came across in our investigation of smell.
1. Methyl salicylate – Wintergreen
If you’ve ever chewed a piece of gum, you know what wintergreen (methyl salicylate) smells like. Peppermint and spearmint are more popular, but wintergreen is right at their heels. Speaking of “heels”, the plant itself grows on the floor of the forest, where it has been collected then stripped of its oil for the past two centuries.
2. Vanillin
Vanillin is what’s actually tickling your nostrils when you smell “vanilla”. A typical vanilla bean has 2-3% vanillin content, which is extracted and then used as a fragrance.
3. Piperonal (heliotrope)
What you see pictured isn’t what you think… but you’d still be justified in wanting to sniff it. What you’re looking at is actually piperonal, a fragrant aldehyde often added to perfumes and colognes. Piperonal is actually derived from piperine, which is the alkaloid that gives black pepper its “bite”.
4. Linalool
Linalool is a natural terpene alcohol chemical that smells something like a flower with a spicy “bite” to it. Think Mario Bros. fire flower (if it had a smell), and you’ll have an idea. What’s even more interesting is that Japanese lab studies have shown that neutrophils and lymphocytes levels (which are linked to stress) decrease in lab rats when they smell linalool. Of course, first you have to picture a stressed-out rat… being forced to smell perfume… before the study will seem believable.
5. Gasoline
Now, don’t go sniffing the pump unless you want brain damage. Number five is more about experience than fragrance. I smell gasoline and I think of fast cars… bon fires… summertime… and bikinis. As I fill my tank with the benzene, toluene, xylene and C8 alkenes mixture the small whiffs I get make me feel like the world is my drag strip.
6. Ethyl Acetate
Decaf coffee… ice cream… cake… gummy/fruity candies… all of them might have a dash or two of ethyl acetate in them. It has a distinctive sweet smell (similar to pear drops, which is isoamyle acetate), and it even finds use in the perfumery industry.
7. Burning black powder
I’m thinking this might be a guy thing. Still, the smell of expended gunpowder touches something deep and animal-like in all of us, hiding behind the civilized façade. The scent is one that you never forget. Orgasmic and deeply fulfilling.
8. Nitrobenzene
Nitrobenzene is uberstrong fragrance, as in smelling it directly will give you a pounding headache. Most of the best, highly-concentrated smells are like that, though. Nitrobenzene smells something like shoe polish, for reasons unbeknownst to me since it’s extracted from almonds. Still, it’s a very pleasant fragrance to work with right up there with vanillin.
9. Chloroform
Chloroform is a sweet smelling substance harvested from Brown Seaweed. Some would call the fragrance “heady” but I personally think it has a more “bite” to it… at least for the first few whiffs. Makes for the perfect gift for that special someone.
10. Ethanol
You’d have to be brain-dead not to appreciate the sweet smell ethanol. Seriously. Any time I smell ethanol only two words come to mind: “Miller Time”.
Are you seriously just recommending the smell of chloroform without even mentioning that it’s like the original date rape drug?
Chloroform? Seriously? The article was good in general but that last one was a bit much. Maybe you should consider going back to add a disclaimer.
Dude! Old comic books. Nothing smells better than a dark old comic book shop filled with longboxes full of golden and silver age comic books.
I don’t have a sense of smell. My wife uses visual descriptions to try to make me understand what thinks smell like. I’m often surprised by the things that have an odor. Things like air coming out of a tire, wet dirt after rain, stuff like that puzzles me to no end. Old comic books? That one really took me for a loop.
I’m pretty sure he added chloroform as a joke. I laughed at it. If you didn’t catch the joke, you’re quite uptight.
The smell of coffee grinding is by far the best smell on Earth. This list sux balls.
Pick up line No.1 “Hey, does this rag smells like choloroform to you?”
Bacon. You forgot BACON. It should be number one.
Baking bread should be in there as well.
I got a good one for you. The inside of a library book. Love that smell.
Just before it rains on a hot day.
The smell of freshly ground up cannabis.. wayyy better than the smell of alcohol (ethanol). Like a piney sweet diesel smell that can range from fruity to skunky. Makes my eyes roll backwards
Erm, Freshly cut grass should be there …
” Still, the smell of expended gunpowder touches something deep and animal-like in all of us, hiding behind the civilized facade. The scent is one that you never forget. Orgasmic and deeply fulfilling.”
You can see more about that?
You forgot weed. Literally the most awesome pungent smell in the world. I would buy it just to smell it even if it didnt get me high
OP is a huge faggot, he doesn’t know the difference between likin a smell and likin gettin high with solvents. 4/10 of list are solvents that get u high when u smell it (like all solvents do). that’s why a lot of people like the smell of paint or gasoline.
also, weed is the best smell on earth, and every weed has a different smell, so it goes over the first nine thousand position of the list
weed, new car, old books or an autum garden. Lovely