Love: basil, cilantro, lemons, and brownies

hate: stale freezer, kidneys cooking, burnt toast, the cold greasy smell of an empty commercial kitchen that wasn’t well cleaned

I cannot think of any aromas that I "love" - I prefer for aromas to be extremely subtle, and if they are stronger than that, then I tire of them extremely quickly.

Fish is my favorite thing to eat - therefore I must like the aroma of fish, according to your theory, but as I said, I prefer extremely subtle aromas.

I baked some rye bread yesterday that has caraway and fennel seeds in it, and I did appreciate the aroma from the fennel, but it is not one of my favorite aromas. I like herbs but don't love them, and they also have to remain subtle. I do like the aroma of toasting chilies.

I like the smell of most fruit, especially freshly-picked passion fruit, cherimoya, pineapple, lemon, etc. in small doses. The passion fruit sorbet that I made with fruit that I grew had a wonderful aroma, and it remained subtle, which is one reason I like it. I also like vanilla in small doses.

The hate list would have to include coffee. I hate nutmeg except in small doses in things like eggnog - it ruins the flavor of spinach for me. I also hate cinnamon in savory dishes unless the quantity is so small that it is barely discernible.

#1 favorite aroma: Butter in the hot frying pan!

walnuts, durian, bacon, fresh cookies, vanilla

I have this vague memory of a survey or something like this. Anyway:

Love:

Bread baking, any variety

Onions sauteing in butter

Fresh coffee

Lemon basil. Love the smell, but haven't figured out any way to cook with it.

Turkey and dressing (I think because it always reminds me of family holidays)

Dislike, although maybe not "hate"

Pickles, to eat or smell.

Kim chee, I haven't even been able to taste it because I can't get past the smell

Pizza (maybe it's the burnt crust/crunchy cheese/red sauce combo?)

Hot peppers (although I happily grow them, I don't eat/smell/touch them otherwise)

I can't think of any others I don't like that are food related, but remember, I'm a farmer. I have smelled some disgusting stuff, LOL.

Annie

I like:

fresh coffee

bread baking

pasties baking

grilled beef/burgers

Thanksgiving dinner

Dislike:

fish

cabbage

bear meat

Love to smell

1. Bread. Baking or just baked. Specifically, a plain, white, highly hydrated bread with crust like plate glass and gaping caverns of chewy crumb.
2. Tomatoes. Ripe, unwashed, freshly pulled off the vine, by and in your hand, en route to your mouth, after a detour to the salt shaker, which you keep on a post in the garden in which you stand, under the hot sun and among the heavy vines, about to be eaten like an apple, that last referring to the tomato, which made its appearance so long ago in this paragraph that we’ve quite forgotten of what we were speaking.
3. Broth. Not the dirty laundry smell of early broth, raw onions, oily fat, and boiling scum. Not even the hearth-and-home smell of middle broth hitting its honest stride after four hours of skimming, with herbs and spices added. I mean the dense, meaty, layered, concentrated, redolent aroma of late, late, late broth simmered overnight and strained and defatted and reduced and clarified to be savored from a highball glass, hot shimmering liquid beef with a splash of vodka and a sprinkle of fleur de sel.
4. Pesto. Basil by the handful, fresh garlic, olive oil, dark toasted nuts, good hard tangy cheese, all those scents liberated, combined, atomized, and flung into the room by the whirring food processor. A food processor is recommended. Pesto made with mortar and pestle has that added smell of effort, sweat, and blisters, that I personally find offputting. I guess if it’s the right comely person working that pestle, while you watch appreciatively with a glass of chilled Prosecco, you could find the sweat sexy, but some uptight SJW will come along and accuse you of exploitation and soon you wish you’d just bought your pesto in a plastic tub from Costco and saved yourself the approbation.
5. Wine. Deep red, room temperature, balloon glass, just poured and swirled. Not, it should never have to be said, a sweet red wine.

Meh, intriguing but not emotional to smell

1. Chocolate. That smell means dessert is near, and I like dessert, but I don’t get emotional about it, being more of a ”I’ll share a _____ but only want two bites” person. Unless we are talking about creme brulee or creme caramel. Drat, those should have been in the first list.
2. Bananas. Smell good. Taste okay. Ruins any dish in which incorporated, except ice cream. To this day the smell of Bananas Foster makes me want to vomit, because once it did.
3. Average taco van aka roach coach. A little bit of grill, a little bit of diesel. It’s usually going to be a mediocre meal. You’re going to eat it anyway. Because where there is a roach coach, there by definition is nothing else to eat.
4. A diner, on a secondary road. Smell of weak coffee, hash and grease on the flattop, brown oil in the deep fryer, dirt and jeans, cigarette butts and motor oil. Similar experience coming as #3. Probably. There are glorious exceptions with diners, seldom with roach coaches.
5. Lager or pilsner. Beer is always intriguing, then you get closer and think “crap, its just pilsner (or lager)”, which your subconscious knew from the thin reedy smell, and it emotionally protected you by whispering in your ear ”you’d rather have a spritz”. This happens a lot in France and Italy, where the chances of that beer being an ale, stout, or (non-flavoured, non-hazy, generally non-weirdo) IPA is slim.

Hate to smell

1. Durian. Why does every Asian market have this stuff. Most of us don’t eat it. The ones who claim to like it can go live in their own Stinkytown. How can you like the taste of something that smells so bad? Smell is part of taste! Dogs eat stinky cat poop. Be better than a dog. Please. You’re making us look bad.
2. Super sicky sweet stuff. Like cotton candy, inch-thick pink frosting, those volcano things spewing melted milk chocolate, all the other sickness-on-a-stick things you find at the county fair.
3. Espresso shots at most coffee shops in the US, while the ”ooo, light roast, ooo, spe-cial-lity coffee” crowd puts their pale dry rattly beans through espresso machines designed for traditional dark oily roasts, and produce shots so sour that your face looks like your other end is having a rectal exam. On the other hand, I like the smell of espresso shots in France and Italy.
4. Standard hot dogs, boiled. Meaning your basic Oscar Meyer or equivalent weiner. The smell itself isn’t bad, but its the association with the soft, mushy, tasteless, oversalty, sack of meat byproduct that it precedes.
5. Some food with cooked oranges in it. I like fresh oranges. There is something about some ways of cooking oranges that makes me think of the Porcelain Bus. Roasting is ok, stewing is not. Canard a l’orange is ok, having warm sour-sweet acid in my throat is not.

I love smelling it all, except food gone bad or burnt. I suspect I don't want to smell durian.

Love ; chicken, garlic, bread, bacon, oysters

Hate ; cauliflower, fishy smells, frying, fruit teas, cinnamon

Even though I am a vegetarian, I love the smell of roast chicken. And herby stuffing. And chicken soup.

Pesto a nice vegetarian smell.

Lemons and lemon peel

Amaretto

Mulled wine or cider

Gingerbread or other spiced baked goods. The sweet spices are great, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg anise and my personal favorite, cardamom. Also vanilla

Pizza and other baked breads

A pie baking or fresh out of the oven is a great smell, particularly the fruit pies

Cheese melting

Cooked cereal, particularly oatmeal. Not great smelling but reminds me of my grandmothers, so a good association and the smell is not objectionable.

I just remembered I like the smell of coconut. I use coconut oil as a skin moisturizer, due to it helping with some of my sensitive skin irritations. It doesn't have much smell when used in cooking really. Love the smell of an Almond Joy. Three great smells, coconut, almond and chocolate.

I'm not sure about "meh" Garlic and onions. Not a fan but in small doses OK. Don't like a lingering smell of either.

Coffee smells good sometimes. Depends on the coffee. Same with tea.

Peanut butter, I find a bit cloying.

Not a huge clove fan but OK in small doses.

Same with saffron, ok but not great, small doses better.

Milk. Not a big fan of that smell. Same with sour cream, cottage cheese, and goat cheese. But I like to eat them, so not terrible.

Oddly, I hate the smell of bacon. Smells like heart disease to me. I like the taste of bacon though. Also not a fan of sausage frying smell.

Not a big fan of the Chinese restaurant smell. I'm allergic to msg and that combined with rancid oil from not great cleaning is what does it for me. In general, I really like Chinese food so it's just some residues from cooking it, not the food itself. As long as no msg. That's a smell I don't like.

Fresh fish smells good. Not so fresh, that's when the ammonia smell starts, so not a good sign.

Burning grease. I associate that with cooked goose or duck, because it often spills when I'm cooking either.

Quinoa and buckwheat I don't care for, smells too much like grass to be appetizing.

Cooked liver, like chicken liver. I think that's why people don't like it, they can't get over the smell. I don't hate it, but the smell is pretty bad, I will admit. Have not smelled that in a good long while, we don't eat liver anymore.

Oddly…. I like the smell of coffee (which I never drink), bakery baking, & soup. I don’t mind others……… as long as they don’t stick around in a closed-up house. Like Lars, I don’t like smells to hang around.

Annie, re: lemon thyme: it’s very good in chicken soup. I can‘t imagine that in anything chickenish or seafoodish it wouldn’t taste good.

Interesting about the grassy smell of quinoa and buckwheat since neither seed is from a grass. The plants are both pseudocereals. For me, a lot of herbs smell grassy, but I think that's the general "green" smell of chlorophyll. :)

Kate, it isn't lemon thyme, it's lemon basil. I love the lemon-y smell, and the taste of it uncooked, but the chef at the B&B tried turning it into muffins and it just lost it's flavor. I minced some up to go on salmon and it was good, but it has that green/lemon combination of flavors that just doesn't "go" very well with a lot of things. It's really good in iced tea, I think, but my daughter hates it, so it's a very subjective thing, I guess.

Annie

Ahhh… I guess i misread. Sorry about that. I’ve never even heard of Lemon Basil.

I guess one could tear it up in a salad. ??? I like fresh Basil in salads and on pizza, but it’s never been a go-to for me.

Cut vegetation has a certain smell based on the chemicals in the plant, not the plant species per se. For example, many unrelated plants smell vaguely like vanilla, which is based on the plant chemicals and even some non plant things have that smell. There are even grasses that have a vaguely vanilla scent. And if you cut your grass, you might just cut a few weeds in there in the buckwheat family, it's a huge plant family. Quinoa also tastes to me like grass, which I have chewed, even though I know it is not grass. On the flip side, I like lamb's quarters, they are mild and delicious to me and they are also in the buckwheat family. But in that case I'm eating the leaves. I haven't quinoa leaves, for all I know they too could taste good. Spinach beets and chard are also in the Amaranth plant family. I don't like the smell of any of those cooking but I like the taste. It's described as "earthy." I like them to eat, just not "mmmm that smells good."

Buckwheat is not in the Amaranth family, I was wrong. It is in the smartweed family. But the two seeds taste similar to me, along with the taste of certain grasses. Not sure my most common grass for chewing on, I've chewed foxtail, tickle grass, rye and bluegrass for sure. Googling it, I see that rhubarb is in the buckwheat family too. Along with sorrel. Sorrel leaves are edible and rhubarb's are poisonous. Plant chemicals are vast, we seriously underestimate them!