Working under the Odeuropa banner, a team of chemists and historians have spent more than two years isolating and recreating key scents associated with important moments and locations. Smell, they argue, has been unfairly neglected in academic efforts to understand the past, especially considering its impact on everyday life. “There has been a hierarchy of the senses in science and in historical study. We want to see a multi-sensory approach,” said Cecilia Bembibre, lecturer in sustainable heritage at University College London (UCL). “There was an idea that smell was a less noble human sense and that it was somehow less objective, less educated and even less reliable.” The consortium of experts involved in the project is based in Amsterdam, but there are research bases in Germany, Italy, France and Slovenia, as well as at UCL and Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Dutch scientists have created a perfume that matches the smell of the dirty canals of old Amsterdam. Dr Marieke von Erp, project manager at the Odeuropa experiment, created a shocking mixture of corpses, seawater and sewage, as well as recreating the pomades that were once carried to mask such unwanted smells. The wider project, funded by a €2.8 million grant from the EU’s Horizon program in 2020, aims to establish the science of olfactory history by harnessing visual and written evidence to piece together key odors created by outmoded occupations, habits and diets . “In Germany, they are analyzing tens of thousands of historical images related to olfaction, while in Italy they are focusing on text analysis, from old medical formulas to cookery manuals,” said Bembibre, a researcher on the Odeuropa project who also works at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage. where she recently completed her PhD on Smell of Heritage. Anicka Yi’s installation at Tate Modern last October used bespoke perfumes. Photo: Nicky J Sims/Getty Images He explained that much of the work has focused on teaching computers to recognize images associated with smells, for example a sketch of someone holding their nose. By exposing digital search tools to a series of similar images, researchers can create an algorithm that recognizes gestures in other images. Ultimately this project will enable the compilation of an encyclopedia of historical scents, a secondary component of the project led by Dr William Tullett at Anglia Ruskin. These scents will explain the world’s changing environments, as well as provide insight into the lives of those involved. Olfactory cues, the researchers argue, should also be preserved for posterity, not just visual, physical and written ones. But there are a lot of nasal complexities to negotiate – as Bembibre points out: “It’s really hard to get the information you need to bring back the smells.” Her own chemical work has reproduced the aroma of a 1750s potpourri at Knole – the ancestral home of the Sackville-West family in Kent – a description of which appears in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. He has 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 a specialist perfumer, Sarah McCartney, to try to create the same olfactory experience based only on her instincts about her ingredients. In randomized 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 original smells with the right chemicals, or if we’re just trying to evoke an experience by 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 way now and some smells mean different things.” Fortunately, not all lost smells are unpleasant. Work also focuses on recreating forgotten incense blends and popular culinary recipes. “We really want to engage the communities. There are ‘nose witnesses’ alive now who can help us recreate smells from their childhood or from professions that no longer exist,” Bembibre said. Odeuropa’s research benefited from commercial perfumers’ increased interest in niche scents – leather, spice and tobacco are now common ingredients in expensive brands. Artists have also begun to approach the world of fragrances, choosing to accompany gallery exhibitions with bespoke perfumes, such as the Anicka Yi show at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London last autumn. The Jorvik Viking Center in York pioneered the introduction of scents into its exhibits more than two decades ago.
