Even if you haven’t been formally introduced to Mandy Aftel’s transportative natural perfumes—from her small-batch liquid fragrances in their miniature glass bottles to her solid scents encased in reclaimed antique boxes—there’s a chance you’ve had an unwitting encounter with her popular culinary oils. Bartenders at PDT and Pegu Club, both in Manhattan, have incorporated the flavored essences into experimental cocktails; the artisanal ice cream whiz Jeni Britton Bauer uses them to churn out imaginative new flavors (vanilla cedar wood, wildberry lavender); and Daniel Patterson, the Bay Area chef who collaborated with Aftel on the 2004 cookbook Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance [Artisan], stocks several varieties—including coriander, wild sweet orange, and pine needle—in the kitchen of his two-Michelin-star restaurant, Coi.
Today, Aftel opens another portal into her olfactory domain, with the launch of her latest book, Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent [Riverhead]. Centered around five key aromatics—jasmine, cinnamon, ambergris, mint, and frankincense—it weaves together a powerful history of the senses. “People sailed around the world the wrong way just to get different aromas into their lives,” explains Aftel. In the spirit of those spice-seeking adventurers, she sets off on a sweeping narrative tour, exploring the role of scent in everything from Greek mythology and classic texts likes One Thousand and One Nights to its impact on modern medicine, and even flapper-era cocktails. Here are just five of the curiosities we learned from Aftel’s new book.
The post 5 Things You Never Knew About Perfume: A New Book Unlocks the Secret History of Scent appeared first on Vogue.
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