"Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel."
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1841–1935), American jurist and Supreme Coutrt Judge
The most simple smell can elicit a deluge of memories. If you can harness the memory of a particular smell then you may be able to recall long-forgotten experiences and memories associated with that aroma.
In one of the most famous experiences of memory brought about by smells, Marcel Proust recalls his aunt’s kitchen, all through the aroma given off by a small cake, a madeleine:
No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. … Whence did it come? What did it mean? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray… when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Your ‘madeleine’ experience might be your grandmother’s cake, but it might just as well be the smell of tobacco that reminds you of your grandfather’s pipe, or the smell of oil and petrol from your parent’s garage.
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