There are some constants in my life that I need to start planning for. For example, I get called for jury duty about every 20-22 months – “random” drawing system? Yeah, whatever. New fancy shoes will give me blisters. And I’ll get a nasty cold about every second Christmas.
This was a cold year. As if I’m not miserable enough, it’s also a jury duty year – I’ll be taking my coughing self to the courthouse on January 2. Maybe they’ll send me home. But this year’s bad cold came with an unpleasant side effect – anosmia.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, anosmia means loss of the sense of smell, and according to WebMD, the most common cause is from having a cold or allergies. Bingo. I’m lucky that I don’t get colds too often, and this is the first time this has happened to me. Ironically, it occurred the same day I read the section on smell science in the book Cork Dork: A wine-fueled adventure among the obsessive sommeliers, big bottle hunters, and rogue scientists who taught me to live for taste, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. Her description of how smell is linked so intimately to taste and how it combines to create the experience of “flavoring” was spot on with my experience. Yep, with my sense of smell gone, I can only taste a narrow range of flavors. It’s weird, bizarre, and disturbing. But also interesting.
So how much cold mucous does it take to block one’s sense of smell? I searched for articles on the size of the actual olfactory receptor zone. Pretty small, considering. One site described the olfactory epithelium as “a patch of tissue about the size of a postage stamp located high in the nasal cavity.” Although of Italian heritage, my nose isn’t that big, so one would think a postage stamp would be big enough to not be fully impacted by my cold. But like I said, it’s a nasty one. I’ll spare you the thick, viscous details on what’s going on in my nasal cavity at the moment, but suffice it to say, I’m not surprised.
Now that I’ve satisfied my inner twelve-year-old and discussed my snot – don’t worry, I won’t show you pictures – let’s move to my palate. Although annoying, this experience has given me some insight into where I detect certain flavors and other gustatory experiences to pay more attention to. One of the interesting facts I learned in Cork Dork: (ridiculously long subtitle that would make any psychology researcher proud to claim) is that the tongue map we all learned in kindergarten is wrong – as with many things about our bodies, the picture is more complex, and we can taste different flavors all over our tongues. With smell taken out of the picture, I’ve figured out I taste sweet along the sides of my tongue and bitter along the top. The heat of onions hits me in the back of my mouth, and of sriracha in the front. The bitterness of tea and coffee is top middle and also the back of my upper palate. These are areas I’ll pay more attention to when seeking the flavors in wine. Once I can drink it again.
One element of food I’ve always been picky about is texture. Without smell, that’s gotten to be more interesting and important. For example, yesterday for lunch we finished off the tuna bruschetta Hubby had made for an appetizer on Sunday as sandwiches. He said the flavors had mellowed. I recalled it as having been fairly strong between the tuna, red onion, and vinegar. While I couldn’t really taste it aside from the previously mentioned onion heat, I did notice the crunch of the onions, the softness of the bread, and the mushiness of the tuna. So at least there was something. Tonight he’s making beef and barley stew. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to taste at least a little of it and that my smell will be fully back soon so that I’ll be able to enjoy wine with the leftovers!