Cooking/food smells you love or loathe

[HalcyonDaze]

Maybe one more for the apartment dwellers.

We have Polish neighbours in our apartment block. Some days I walk up the stairs and there are amazing smells coming from their door. Mouth watering meaty casserole type smells. It makes me so hungry (and also makes me want to go to the library and get some Polish recipe books)

Other days there might be a boiled cabbage smell which is hideous.


And as a kid, I just couldn't handle (and still can't) when Mum would boil a whole chicken to make chicken stock. Roasting a chook is fine, steaming or boiling it just stinks to high heaven and makes me feel ill.


How about you? What smells do you love? And what turns your stomach?

[elora]

urgh - I hate, hate, hate the smell of frying mushrooms. It really turns my stomach for some reason. Naturally, my husband loooves fried mushrooms. When I have to go out for the evening, his standard meal is steak and fried mushrooms. I always come home to a house with all the doors and windows open airing out the noxious fumes.

smells I love? Fresh bread, fresh ground or fresh brewed coffee, almost anything baking.

[whothingie]

Hate the smell of fish cooking - love the taste. Love the smell of bread cooking - hate the indigestion it gives me.

[weeg]

I cannot understand how anyone can eat something that smells the way tuna does. Hideous. Especially the tinned stuff. I don't like the smell of any fish, but tuna takes the biscuit.

Nothing smells more like dinner than the smell of onions and garlic frying off. It's the start of practically everything is cook and I love that smell.

[HalcyonDaze]

Yes, I hate tuna as well. It should be banned as a sandwich filling.

[wombatrois]

Salmon is worse, I think.

I'm not fond of the residual smell of fish - it's OK when it's actually cooking.

I've recently developed an aversion to the smell of bay leaves - not sure what that's about.

The smell of raw meat is appalling for me. I think it's half the reason I don't eat much meat (another is textural).

[sprite]

i love the smell of frying onions. i'm not so keen on them to eat. (texture)

it seems that most apartment buildings i go into have the same smell. it's wierd.

[vinnyd]

I used to walk past an Afghanistani restaurant when they were apparently frying up all the garlic they would need that evening. I loved it.

Can't stand the smell of popcorn.

[wombatrois]

Popcorn in cinemas is vile. We used to have a popcorn-free culture when I was growing up, but then globalisation occurred and we got popcorn.

[HalcyonDaze]

Popcorn done at home is fine - I love it and the smell of it. I used to think I hated popcorn because I only knew the hideous cinema stuff.

[crazycat]

Love the smell of fresh bread, garlic cooking and any chocolate baking.

I hate the smell of lamb cooking. It really turns my stomach.

[owlet]

Our downstairs neighbours are Chinese and from time to time they cook things that smell absolutely vile by the time the smell wafts upstairs.. think boiled cabbage and cooking oil.

[shilgia]

On my walk to the subway in the morning, there's one spot where once or twice a week there is a terrible smell of something cooking. Always the same thing. I have not yet figured out what it is, but it makes me hold my breath for the whole block.

[Liiisa]

Subway and McDonalds have a gross smell... otherwise I pretty much think that everything smells yummy.

[libbyh]

Burnt toast - not so common these days with automatic toasters etc. but I used to get woken up when I was young by my father burning the toast for his breakfast as he would always forget to check the machine in time. I used to really really hate it.

[wombatrois]

Oh Subway is disgusting too, I agree. I don't get near enough to McDonalds to smell it, but Subway is unavoidable sometimes b/c it's often located in or near retail precincts (maccas is usually free-standing and therefore I don't go near it).

Home cooked popcorn is a different beast indeed, Hal. We occasionally had that at home as kids. The popcorn-due-to-globalisation comment was cinema popcorn.

I'll stick to fantales, jaffas and little buckets of ice-cream (or chocolate bombs), thanks. And death to anyone who takes packets of potato chips into a cinema!

[princessofpenguins]

Yeah, Subway smells disgusting... I don´t get why people eat there with that smell...

[princessofpenguins]

Love the smell of roast pork or chicken, yeast baking (bread, sweet buns, whatever), garlic...

[sprite]

i used to love the smell of subway bread. but then i had one a couple years back, after more than 5 yrs without, and it was not near as pleasant as i remembered from my teens.

[sophie]

The smell of frying fires and chicken at Kentucky fried chicken or any other chicken place is enough to make me never to eat there.

[tucano]

I may be alone here, but the smell of frying bacon really makes me queasy. Love the smell of roast chicken (don't eat either).

[HalcyonDaze]

The bacon I cooked this morning didn't smell right - it was packet stuff from the supermarket. Won't ever buy that stuff again.

[sprite]

i've started looking at the meat content, which never occurred to me before. more expensive, but doesn't have that bad smell.

[romily]

I love love love the smell of freshly baked bread. I have even been known to bury my noise into a still warm loaf! Nothing better. Otherwise, many pleasant smalls – roasting garlic, different curries when they bubble along, meaty stews, chili stir fries…But fresh bread beats them all.

Smells I hate – the smell of freshly peeled oranges. I actually have a physical reaction to it as it makes me nauseous and I start to gag if it’s intense, so usually try to remove myself from the situation. Also hate the smell of tinned tuna – no idea how anybody can eat that, it’s just vile. Also rotten food smells, especially fruit – you know the smell that you get in a compost bin if you don’t empty it very often? Yuck.

Don’t mind the smell of fast food places, or anything fried up – although I don’t think I ever been to a subway or have eaten there I just realised!

[sprite]

i caught a whiff of something today that took me back to a burger joint from my childhood, i actually stood there sniffing the air for a minute, trying to figure out what it was. it wasn't a food smell, but it reminded me of some part of the "burger baron." maybe the foil wrappers the tater tots came in.

[shilgia]

Jun 10, 2015 4:33:13 GMT -5 romily said:

Smells I hate – the smell of freshly peeled oranges. I actually have a physical reaction to it as it makes me nauseous and I start to gag if it’s intense, so usually try to remove myself from the situation.

Interesting. Are you allergic to oranges as well, or do you react badly only to the smell?

[Webs]

Love the smell of frying onions. It reminds me of the best things.

I hate the smell of boiled cabbage. And fish heated up in the microwave. Makes me gag.

[romily]

Not allergic - although I could not eat a real orange without being sick. But orange juice without bits is fine.

I've been forcefed freshly pressed juice by my gran - she meant only well!!! - that included oranges, and all kind of other fruits, and was full of bits. And the smell of oranges overpowered the other fruits. That's where I think it comes from - I still today can't drink anything with bits in it, it makes me gag violently.

[weeg]

Jun 10, 2015 15:58:15 GMT -5 Webs said:

And fish heated up in the microwave. Makes me gag.

Ewww! I'm just imagining that and I want to gag. You should be allowed to firebomb anyone who doe that.

[tinaja]

When I open a bag a microwave popcorn it smells like dirty tennis shoes (but it goes away and I eat it). The smell of the fried chicken place near my house.

Baking bread, pot roast on the stove, just about anything else not greasy smells great. Coffee. There is an old timey diner smell and I don't know what its from that is nostalgic for me.