Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
Release Date: July 1, 2011
Format: Paperback ARC
Pages: 320
Source: Publisher
From
Goodreads: An aspiring chef's moving account of finding her way—in the kitchen and beyond—after a tragic accident destroys her sense of smell
At twenty-two, just out of college, Molly Birnbaum spent her nights reading cookbooks and her days working at a Boston bistro, preparing to start training at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America. She knew exactly where she wanted the life ahead to lead: She wanted to be a chef. But shortly before she was due to matriculate, she was hit by a car while out for a run in Boston. The accident fractured her skull, broke her pelvis, tore her knee to shreds—and destroyed her sense of smell. The flesh and bones would heal...but her sense of smell? And not being able to smell meant not being able to cook. She dropped her cooking school plans, quit her restaurant job, and sank into a depression.
Season to Taste is the story of what came next: how she picked herself up and set off on a grand, entertaining quest in the hopes of learning to smell again. Writing with the good cheer and great charm of Laurie Colwin or Ruth Reichl, she explores the science of olfaction, pheromones, and Proust's madeleine; she meets leading experts, including the writer Oliver Sacks, scientist Stuart Firestein, and perfumer Christophe Laudamiel; and she visits a pioneering New Jersey flavor lab, eats at Grant Achatz's legendary Chicago restaurant Alinea, and enrolls at a renowned perfume school in the South of France, all in an effort to understand and overcome her condition.
A moving personal story packed with surprising facts about our senses, Season to Taste is filled with unforgettable descriptions of the smells Birnbaum rediscovers—from cinnamon, cedarwood, and fresh bagels to rosemary chicken, lavender, and apple pie—as she falls in love, learns to smell from scratch, and starts, once again, to cook.
My review: I started this book thinking it would be more about an established chef losing their sense of smell, which I thought sounded challenging and possibly career ending. Instead, the pages contained the story of Molly a young girl getting her start in the restaurant world. Even though this book is non-fiction, the story had the makings of a great fictional tale of loss and struggle.
She was only weeks away from starting at a culinary school and was learning the ropes of a restaurant’s inner workings at the time she was hit by a car resulting in major injuries and the loss of her sense of smell. Where does one go when they have lost one of the most important bodily parts for a career a chef? Reading her struggle with charting a new life path I imagined myself in her shoes. What would I do if I lost my hands – I need them to type at my current job. What would my Husband do without his arms to get himself into his bunker gear to fight a fire or do CPR on a patient in the ambulance? Those are questions I hope I never had to really answer, but Molly did have to figure out the answers.
Within the story of her life the reader learns a lot about noses and the sense of smell. I was pleasantly surprised by this information and found myself learning new things about the what appears to be a partially researched aspect of our daily lives. The impact this lack of smell had on Molly was also surprising to me on the surface. I had never really though about how much scent is used in relations to eating, memories and almost every task a person does. The book did a great job of explaining how rehabilitating the loss of scent could be to a person.
If you are interested in learning more about smelling or if you enjoy cooking this book would be a good read.
