At the moment, we're working on what I think is the most important of our senses; smell. Why is it so important? What does smell do? It does everything. It makes you hungry. It excites you - or not.  

So at Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, we have started developing aromas such as oyster, lobster, charcoal and candy. How do we do this? We use an evaporator, smoke gun or "volcano" (a machine that allows us to make flavoured smoke from ingredients, such as herbs), which allows us to explore the idea of smell in the dining room.

The Importance of Scent

As I mentioned the sense of smell, and the scents we pick up, occupy a special role in food enjoyment and gastronomy. For example, have you ever wondered why food loses its flavour when you have a cold? It's not your taste buds' fault. Blame your stuffed-up nose. 

Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavours. It's the actual scent from food that gives us most of our taste sensation. 

The Candy Shop

Through lots of trial and error, and hits and misses, we now know that smell and scents to be precise and that they play a very big role in enhancing a dish and help bring another element which guests take for granted. For example, we have a petit four on the menu which we call ‘candy shop'. The petit four includes many small parts of different sweets and treats that resemble a candy shop from years gone by. But before the dessert even reaches the guest we enter the room and spray the air with our own ‘secret' candy perfume. The scent definitely awakens the guest senses and already they are anticipating what goodies lie ahead.

But of course when we think of pleasant smells the obvious choice would be to immediately think of sweet or dessert like smells but now we are using odours that work with main courses. Like one of our lobster dishes. It has a layer of dry ice and lobster oil on the bottom of the plate. When the guest receives the dish the waiter gently pours warm water over the disguised dry ice and lobster oil, immediately the aroma from our homemade oil is released and the lobster ‘perfume' hits the guest nostrils, and prepares them for the actual butter poached lobster tail.

Try it Home

The same can also be done in reverse technique, whereby what the guest smells is not always what the guest eats. For example you can try this your self by strongly inhaling fresh vanilla for 5 to 10 seconds then eating something quite neutral like a cracker or a piece of cheese. Automatically you will, for the first three to four bites, distinctly taste vanilla. So in that way taste can play tricks with our mind. A good example of this is the durian, which we all know the scent from 100 meters away, but the taste is actually very mild and sweet in comparison.

Also researchers have discovered that an odour can mainly be detected in liquid form, this is why we are now playing around with making water and oil based sprays that give dishes certain flavours. We can do this by using pieces of equipment such as vaporisers and distilling machines.  

As you can see scent is one of the most important Building Blocks in menu planning, however it is vital to remember that the ingredient is the most important thing of all.