Nose Deep

Crack open the weathered pages of an old book and what do you smell? According to research conducted by Matija Strlič and his team at University College London’s Institute of Sustainable Heritage, it’s likely to be “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.”

It’s also likely that you’ll find the scent to be comforting, familiar, perhaps laced with nostalgia. Olfaction is linked directly to the limbic part of the brain responsible for memory and emotions so, when such an odor-evoked emotion surfaces, it’s because your brain has been triggered to summon childhood memories. But this scent taps into a larger collective memory that we share, says Cecilia Bembibre, a PhD student who worked with Strlič to analyze, document and archive the role of historic smells in our cultural heritage. “If we want to talk about the way we lived, would we use the smell of books as entryways into who we were and what we valued?” she asks.

While buildings and objects have long been considered essential components of our heritage, the more intangible concept of scent has been largely overlooked. Yet Bembibre notes that the smell of old books has always possessed cultural clout, judging by the many quotes in literature about their musk—and the fact that brands such as Byredo are introducing book-scented candles, perfumes and oils. It may be simply that our lack of language skills around scent has prevented us from preserving it. “Because we don’t have formal education on smells most of the time, it’s quite hard to talk about them and describe them in a way that is standardized,” she says. “Sometimes you perceive a smell and the first thing you want to say about it is a very personal memory like, ‘It smells like my grandmother’s purse.’”

In their quest to change this, the team at UCL worked to create a historic book odor wheel that represents the first step toward documenting heritage smells. While Strlič looked at the volatile organic compounds that are off-gassed from the paper of old books, Bembibre focused on decoding the human experience surrounding the scent. Sometimes, she’d take groups of people to the library and ask them to describe the aromas—“woody” and “musty” were commonly used as people gazed around at the heavy wooden furniture and dusty tomes. In another study, she presented an unlabeled canister containing the scent and asked people to detail what they smelled without any visual cues. This time, they mentioned notes of chocolate, cocoa, coffee and vanilla.

“At a point when our personal libraries are getting smaller and smaller because we do all our reading in digital form, there might come a time when we barely have any paper books at home,” says Bembibre. Should that day come, at least the scent of old books will have endured: grassy, sweet and steeped in a collective longing.