Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Food & Fragrance

by Mandy Aftel, Daniel Patterson

A New Way of Thinking About Food and Fragrance

Turn a brilliant natural perfumer loose in a chef's kitchen and you get vanilla perfume, saffron, ginger, and blood orange bath salts, and a cucumber mist. Turn a brilliant chef loose in a perfumer's pantry and you get rose-infused steamed bass, peach-jasmine sorbet, and scores of other startlingly original recipes using floral and herbal aromas.

Aroma permeates every cuisine, from ancient to modern, in every culture and at every level, but what this pioneering cookbook, by chef Daniel Patterson and perfumer Mandy Aftel, makes evident is that aroma, not taste, is our primary experience of food. Without aroma there is no flavor. By focusing on aroma, we intensify all aspects of food, and immeasurably enhance the experience of cooking and eating.

While many cookbooks include some discussion of the use of aromatics in cooking, none concentrates on this essential link, where a few drops of a fragrant essence can make commonplace dishes memorable and good dishes great. Both the food recipes and the fragrance recipes in Aroma are powerfully alluring, whether it's a coffee cologne or an orange flower custard. Cumin vinaigrettes and lemon verbena mists waft off the page. Lavender makes a grilled steak sizzle while white ruffle makes for a haunting perfume.

Explicit information on ingredients, equipment, and terms and techniques complements one fragrance recipe and three food recipes for nearly thirty ingredients—lime, mint, green tea, black pepper, vanilla, and ginger, among others. This seminal work will open your senses to the aromatic, even sensual, dimension of food and fragrance.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference, Culinary

216 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

Mandy Aftel is an American perfumer. She is the owner and nose behind the natural perfume line Aftelier as well as the author of nine books, including four books on natural perfume and a cookbook on essential oils.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is excellent: a woman who combines fragrances to make perfume teamed with a San Francisco chef to produce a book where the wisdom of each would contribute to a greater understanding of how aroma functions. Too bad it didn’t work. The parts written by Patterson (the chef) are fascinating and the parts written by Aftel (the perfumerer) are from LaLa Land. He offers practical tips on how to blend certain herbs, spices and other aromatics to enhance the dining experience. She makes suggestions for how to soak chamois with essential oils to make your books smell pretty. The culinary parts of the text could have been improved by (1) some attention to what is going on at a molecular level in the production and appreciation of aroma and (2) instruction on the home production of infusions (in oil and alcohol, primarily) rather than dependence upon store-bought essences. A number of the recipes suggest very surprising complements, e.g. beef cheeks braised with vanilla, saffron and orange, green tea panna cotta, and coffee-date ice cream with candied orange. The book is worth the cost just for these recipes.

[Paul Klammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good p review of perfume / scent making and concepts plus inspiring recipes that are practical (not crazy difficult) and illustrate the concepts that are possible for use of scents as ingredients. I was looking for ideas that would trigger ideas for homebrewing beer recipes and this book exceeded my goals.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted this book to be "more of the same" after reading the excellent Essence and Alchemy, Aftel's gold standard work on natural perfume. It was not. It has it's merits, and the notion of bringing botanical essenses into the kitchen is intrigueing. However I've yet to try any of the cooking recipes and the fragrance blends left me somewaht underwhelmed. It's a beautiful book and a useful resource, but it is not a continuation of Essence and Alchemy.