Meet the Molecule That Smells Like Pancakes and Set Off Emergency Investigations in NYC

Late on the night time of October 28, 2005, and early into the following morning, New York Metropolis’s 311 service hotline was flooded with calls reporting an odd odor wafting throughout Manhattan. Giant swaths of the island smelled like maple syrup and no person knew why.

Was it terrorism? A stunt from the Eggo individuals? A sneak-attack by sentient maple bushes?

NYPD, NYFD, and NYC’s emergency administration and environmental safety companies launched an investigation that decided the odor was innocent, however it didn’t determine a supply. The odor disappeared, and life went on. Till it popped up once more sooner or later in March 2006. And once more that November. And once more a 12 months after that. Then-hit TV present 30 Rock even made a joke in regards to the mysterious odor.

It took nearly 4 years of sporadic fragrant occasions to lastly clear up the thriller: The maple syrup odor got here from a manufacturing facility in New Jersey processing fenugreek. Usually referred to as by its Hindi identify, methi, fenugreek’s seeds and leaves might be present in stews and spice mixes all through a lot of the assorted regional cuisines of India and Pakistan.

However even an skilled Indian chef has bother describing precisely what methi tastes like by itself. “My recommendation is, don’t style it. It’s bitter!” laughs Pawan Mahendro, proprietor and chef of Badmaash, which he opened in Los Angeles in 2013 along with his two sons. Mahendro grew up in Punjab, in northern India, the place methi seeds usually go into pickles. “My grandmother would do quite a lot of pickling, and we’d all the time play with the methi seeds. One time she mentioned, ‘chunk this.’ I chewed on some they usually had been so bitter I by no means wished to style them once more!” he says. “That was my first reminiscence of methi.”

Since then, Mahendro’s spent 50 years within the restaurant enterprise—in India, Canada, and the US—and adjusted his thoughts about methi. At one Toronto restaurant, he was in control of making house-cured salmon for brunch and experimented with plenty of totally different elements. One mixture of lemon, dill, and methi was particularly in style. “It turned out to be very flavorful,” he remembers. “Individuals began asking, ‘What’s totally different about this?’ However no person might pick why.”

Maple syrup, although? Kinda. “After I roast and powder methi, it has a sweetish type of taste however there’s a bitter ending to it,” Mahendro says. “Possibly like a robust, darkish caramel, sure.”

The molecule accountable for each methi and the Manhattan Maple Whodunit is sotolon (typically spelled with an “e” on the finish—”sotolone”), which is current in fenugreek in massive portions and pops up in all types of different surprising locations. “I’ve used it in banana, pumpkin, elderflower, strawberry, and peach flavors,” says Kim Juelg, a principal flavorist for Givaudan, the world’s largest maker of flavorings and smells. After 25 years working her approach up by means of the ranks of the corporate and coaching in tasting and chemistry, she’s now in control of formulating savory, candy, and beverage flavors for manufacturers you’ve undoubtedly heard of, however which she’s not allowed to call. (In case you see “pure flavors” or “synthetic flavors” on an elements checklist, there’s a superb likelihood Givaudan made them.)

Juelg describes sotolon as a “candy, brown” molecule that you just’d doubtless discover in chemical facsimiles of issues like molasses, caramel, and, sure, maple syrup. In comparison with different elements flavorists have at hand, sotolon is sort of costly, so it’s sometimes used at the side of different, extra inexpensive chemical substances. Your pumpkin spice drinks, and granola bars, and candies, and candles, are made with a mixture of molecules which will embody sotolon, too.

Sotolon is a lactone, which has a really particular definition associated to molecular construction that’s approach too difficult to speak about right here. However for taste functions, lactones are usually oily, and don’t dissolve nicely in water. Which means their scents linger: When Juelg makes use of sotolon at work, it “sticks” to her pores and skin and garments for much longer than, say, banana-flavored isoamyl acetate, which evaporates and washes away fairly readily. “I’ve left work, gone to the grocery on my approach residence, and whereas in line have heard individuals say, ‘Do you odor pancakes?’” she remembers. “Even after showering, you’re gonna odor it for a couple of days.”

Sotolon’s texture additionally makes it helpful for the elusive element of taste referred to as mouthfeel. It “tastes” type of thick, if that makes any sense. “The oiliness of lactones simply lays there and sticks in your tongue,” Juelg says. “We use them quite a bit for ‘fleshiness’ in strawberry or espresso. Stuff you’re making an attempt to provide a fuller mouthfeel with out being candy.” In contrast to molecules that evaporate shortly and also you style on the “entrance” of the palate, you style these “mid-to-finish,” she says.

Sotolon’s “heavy” stickiness and sluggish evaporation is the way it was capable of blow throughout the Hudson, however the cause so many individuals observed the maple odor is that it’s particularly potent. Individuals can style it at concentrations of .02 components per million, which is 2000 occasions as potent as vanillin (because the identify suggests, a significant element of vanilla taste), one other “candy, brown” molecule Juelg works with regularly.

With an vital function in each curries and pretend caramels and syrups, sotolon atomically bridges the divide between candy and savory. And a few of the different pure sources of the chemical do the identical. You will discover plenty of sotolon in sweet cap mushrooms, which cooks usually flip into ice cream or caramels, in addition to within the oxidized minerality of sherry and different barrel-aged wines and spirits, and within the toasty sweetness of cigar tobacco. Homebrewers typically add fenugreek to their beer to provide a refined maple taste with out including sugar. And there’s even a connection to funny-smelling pee: Victims of a uncommon genetic dysfunction referred to as maple syrup urine illness can’t course of sure amino acids correctly, main, by means of a collection of chemical steps, to sotolon—and its distinctive odor—of their excretions. (The illness is often recognized in infants whose mother and father odor, nicely, maple syrup urine, and it may be deadly however it’s pretty simply handled by regulating amino acids within the weight loss program.)

So the following time you’re wandering the streets and get an amazing whiff of maple syrup (assuming you’re not in Vermont in early spring), search for a spice manufacturing facility or an Indian restaurant—no must name the police.

October 2020