The first sign was a noticeable absence of what my friend Chuck politely calls, “bathroom-related smells.” I wondered...could it be true? I rushed out to the garden and pulled a basil leaf from a clueless plant, crushed it between my fingers and put it right up to my nose and sniffed. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing there. It was alarming, distressing and extremely disorienting. I expected something to be a certain way--which has always been that way--and it was not that way. 

My COVID 19 symptoms were relatively mild, as they often are with breakthrough cases. I was fully vaccinated, and the virus remained primarily in the nose and throat region, while my vital organs were protected by the vaccine and my immune system. When my fever broke after a few days, and the body aches, sinus pressure and mild cough subsided, my sense of smell did not return.  

I could still taste food, but flavors were lackluster and textures became more central. I have always been partial to crunchy foods, and having dishes with a range of textures kept things interesting despite the absence of complex flavor compounds that rely on our olfactory capabilities. 

Cooking was a joke. I was lost in the kitchen. So many of the cues  that I take for granted were missing. When onion and garlic are sizzling in a pan of olive oil on the stove and you can’t smell it, what are you even doing? How is that cooking? I instinctively bring the jar of starter to my nose when beginning a batch of sourdough bread. It told me nothing. When the golden crusty loaf came out of the oven, it could have sat on the counter all night and I would have forgotten about it. Normally, that hour of waiting while it cools is agonizing--the aroma of freshly baked bread is irresistible. 

Gardening was strange. Pruning the tomato plants midseason, and training the vines onto the trellis is usually an overwhelming sensory experience. Tomato leaves have an unmistakable fragrance. But I this year, I might as well have been pruning a maple tree. 

It had not occurred to me before I lost it,  the primary role that my sense of smell plays in my everyday life, and the pleasures I experience in some of my favorite pastimes--growing food and cooking food. Sure, I could still do those things but it felt like the volume was turned down. Or as one person described it, it’s like experiencing my garden in black and white instead of the full burst of color I am used to. 

I’m not the first person in food media to explore this topic. Tejal Rao wrote about it for The New York Times, and I heard an interview with her about it on NPR. After months with no change, she dove into scent training, and documented the process in her piece. 

A couple of weeks ago, KCRW’s show Good Food dedicated most of the show to talking about our sense of smell, including an interview with a researcher that shared some fascinating nose knowledge.

 If you want to go further, Harold Mc Gee has written a book called Nose Dive: a field guide to the world’s smells. Some listeners will know Harold McGee from his book On Food and Cooking: science and lore of the kitchen (it has become an essential reference book in my household). Nose Dive is his latest, but it was written before COVID 19 began robbing so many of us of this essential sense.You can hear a 2020 interview with him on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terri Gross. He says that smell is the dominant sense in our appreciation and perception of food.

He says that our experience of food, what we call flavor, the overall sensory experience of food, is built of several sensations. One is taste, on the tongue which is limited to a half dozen or so sensations such as sweet, sour, salty and bitter.But our sense of smell is able to distinguish among hundreds, even thousands of molecules.So the distinctiveness of many foods comes from our perceptions of their aromas. 

This definitely lines up with my experience, and why I didn’t really feel like I’d lost my sense of taste. My taste buds were working fine. For instance, tasting a hot sauce that I made, the acid from the vinegar was coming through, and so was the heat from the peppers. But I wasn’t picking up that distinctive fruitiness of the habanero-- those flavor compounds must reside in the nose. 

I don’t consider myself a super taster. But I might be a super sniffer. Or, at least, I used to be. Less than a month before I caught the virus, I stepped out onto my back porch one morning and smelled gas, like natural gas, or propane. My partner came out and sniffed around, but couldn’t smell it. He called the gas company anyway, and sure enough there was a gas leak at our meter, right next to the back door. I often pick up on foul odors before my family does, and I use my nose to tell me if food is safe to eat. It feels down right dangerous to have this olfactory malfunction. 

I know many people experience this, some as a permanent condition. I never understood how devastating it could be, it seemed like a minor inconvenience. Now I know better. 

When my sense of smell began to return it was atmospheric-- faint perception of something cooking, something savory, I picked it up in the garage before I entered the kitchen where Carl was cooking.I made pesto with the last of the basil, and I caught whiffs of it in the air, but not the garlic on my fingers. The peach dumplings--I almost knew they were baking,

One night in the garden, harvesting the haricots verts, those thin bush beans I love to grow, a dill plant in the next bed over brushed against my arm and my nose caught it. But crushing a feathery frond in my face? Still, not much. 

But I know it is coming back. I believe in its return. Hope is in the air, and it smells like pancakes on the griddle on a Saturday morning. 

Here’s hoping your nose is in perfect working order. It’s one of the simple pleasures of human life, and one that I know I will not take for granted again. 

[hear the audio version on this episode of Earth Eats]