Dung, snuff, fish and old skin: these could prove to be the ingredients needed for time travel. Scholars recovering the lost scents of European history want scents like these to be featured in a wide range of museums and tourist attractions.
Working under the Odeuropa banner, a group of chemists and historians have spent more than two years isolating and reproducing key scents associated with significant moments and places. Smell, they argue, has been unfairly ignored in academic attempts to understand the past, especially given its impact on everyday life.
“There was a hierarchy of the senses in science and in historical research. We want to see a multi-sensory approach,” said Cecilia Bembibre, lecturer in sustainable heritage at University College London (UCL). “There’s this idea that smell is a less noble human sense and that it’s somehow less objective, less educated and even less reliable.”
The consortium of experts involved in the project is based in Amsterdam, but has research bases in Germany, Italy, France and Slovenia, as well as at UCL and Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.
Dutch scientists have created a scent to match the smell of the dirty sewers of old Amsterdam. Dr Marieke von Erp, project manager of the Odeuropa experiment, conjured up a throat-grabbing mix of corpses, seawater and sewage, as well as a recreation of the pomanders once worn to mask such unwanted whiffs.
The wider project, funded by a €2.8m grant from the EU’s Horizon program in 2020, aims to establish the science of olfactory history by using visual and written evidence to collect the key odors generated of outmoded trades, habits, and diets.
“In Germany they are analyzing tens of thousands of historical images related to smell, while in Italy they are concentrating on textual analysis, from old medical formulas to cookery manuals,” said Bembibre, a researcher in the Odeuropa project who also works at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage , where she recently completed a Ph.D., titled “Smell of Heritage.”
Anicka Yi’s installation at Tate Modern last October used bespoke scents. Photo: Nicky J Sims/Getty Images
She explained that much of the work has focused on teaching computers to recognize images associated with smells, such as a sketch of someone holding their nose. By exposing the digital tools to search for a sequence of similar images, researchers can create an algorithm that recognizes gestures in other illustrations.
Ultimately, this work will enable the compilation of an encyclopedia of historical smells, a spin-off of the project led by Dr William Tullett at Anglia Ruskin. These smells will explain the changing world environment as well as provide insight into the lives of the participants. The researchers argue that olfactory cues should also be preserved for posterity, not just visual, physical and written.
But there are a lot of nasal complexities to be negotiated—as Bembibre points out, “It’s really hard to get the information you need to bring the smells back.” Her own chemical work reproduced the aroma of potpourri from 1750 at Knole – the ancestral home of the Sackville-West family in Kent – a description of which appears in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando.
She also recreated the smell of the library at St Paul’s Cathedral in London by extracting detectable elements from the air in 2017 before it was renovated. She then invited specialist perfumer Sarah McCartney to try to create the same olfactory experience based only on her instincts about its components. In random trials, the public was equally convinced by both attempts to imitate the smell of the library.
“We’re trying to decide if it’s academically important if we’re preserving the authentic smells with the right chemicals, or if we’re just trying to evoke an experience, creating a similar effect today,” Bembibre said.
The other difficulty for researchers is that human responses to smells have changed quite radically. “We don’t have historical noses. We just don’t smell the same now, and some smells mean different things.
Fortunately, not all lost odors are unpleasant. The work is also aimed at recreating forgotten incense blends and popular culinary recipes. “We really want to engage the communities. There are now living ‘nose witnesses’ who can help us recreate smells from their childhood or from crafts that no longer exist,” Bembibre said.
Odeuropa’s research benefits from the increased interest among commercial perfumers in niche fragrances – leather, spice and smoke are now common components in expensive brands.
Artists have also begun to approach the world of fragrances, choosing to accompany gallery exhibitions with commissioned fragrances, such as Anicka Yi’s show at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London last fall. The Jorvik Viking Center in York led the way by introducing smells to its exhibits more than two decades ago.
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