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

Late on the evening 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. Massive swaths of the island smelled like maple syrup and no person knew why.

Was it terrorism? A stunt from the Eggo folks? A sneak-attack by sentient maple timber?

NYPD, NYFD, and NYC’s emergency administration and environmental safety companies launched an investigation that decided the odor was innocent, but it surely did not determine a supply. The odor disappeared, and life went on. Till it popped up once more someday in March 2006. And once more that November. And once more a yr 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 resolve the thriller: The maple syrup odor got here from a manufacturing facility in New Jersey processing fenugreek. Usually referred to as by its Hindi title, methi, fenugreek’s seeds and leaves will be present in stews and spice mixes all through a lot of the different regional cuisines of India and Pakistan.

However even an skilled Indian chef has hassle 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 typically go into pickles. “My grandmother would do quite a lot of pickling, and we might at all times play with the methi seeds. One time she mentioned, ‘chunk this.’ I chewed on some and so they have 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 accountable for making house-cured salmon for brunch and experimented with a number of totally different substances. One mixture of lemon, dill, and methi was particularly common. “It turned out to be very flavorful,” he remembers. “Folks began asking, ‘What’s totally different about this?’ However no person might select why.”

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

The molecule answerable for each methi and the Manhattan Maple Whodunit is sotolon (generally spelled with an “e” on the finish—”sotolone”), which is current in fenugreek in giant portions and pops up in all types of different sudden 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 manner up by means of the ranks of the corporate and coaching in tasting and chemistry, she’s now accountable for formulating savory, candy, and beverage flavors for manufacturers you’ve positively heard of, however which she’s not allowed to call. (In the event you see “pure flavors” or “synthetic flavors” on an substances listing, there’s a very good likelihood Givaudan made them.)

Juelg describes sotolon as a “candy, brown” molecule that you simply’d possible discover in chemical facsimiles of issues like molasses, caramel, and, sure, maple syrup. In comparison with different substances flavorists have at hand, sotolon is sort of costly, so it’s usually used along side different, extra reasonably priced chemical compounds. 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 manner too sophisticated to speak about right here. However for taste functions, lactones are usually oily, and don’t dissolve properly in water. Meaning 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 manner dwelling, and whereas in line have heard folks say, ‘Do you odor pancakes?’” she remembers. “Even after showering, you’re gonna odor it for just a few days.”

Sotolon’s texture additionally makes it helpful for the elusive part of taste referred to as mouthfeel. It “tastes” sort of thick, if that makes any sense. “The oiliness of lactones simply lays there and sticks in your tongue,” Juelg says. “We use them loads for ‘fleshiness’ in strawberry or espresso. Stuff you’re attempting to present a fuller mouthfeel with out being candy.” In contrast to molecules that evaporate rapidly 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. Folks can style it at concentrations of .02 elements per million, which is 2000 instances as potent as vanillin (because the title suggests, a serious part of vanilla taste), one other “candy, brown” molecule Juelg works with incessantly.

With an necessary function in each curries and faux caramels and syrups, sotolon atomically bridges the divide between candy and savory. And a number of the different pure sources of the chemical do the identical. You will discover a number of sotolon in sweet cap mushrooms, which cooks typically 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 generally add fenugreek to their beer to supply 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 usually identified in infants whose mother and father odor, properly, maple syrup urine, and it may be deadly but it surely’s pretty simply handled by regulating amino acids within the weight loss plan.)

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