Welcome to Out of the Bottle: The Scented World! Once a month, I’ll be writing about fragrant food and plants, interviewing perfumers, artists, scientists, and other people who use scent in their work, and reporting on exhibitions and lectures related to scent. I’m currently in the process of gathering topic ideas and contacting prospective interviewees, so if you think there is something deliciously smelly I should go eat, a person I’ve just got to talk to, or you’re wondering how those magazine people out in Brooklyn who let an artist bomb their offices with oak moss are doing (and I intend to find out), please make suggestions in the comments. You can also contact me by email: alyssa at nstperfume dot com.
Four years ago, a few heady months after I discovered Now Smell This, I wrote a grateful fan letter to Robin in which I confessed I’d developed a slight (ahem) case of fragrance addiction. I also tried, with my new perfume vocabulary, to describe the scent of the Meyer lemons I had just harvested from the tiny tree in my backyard.1 So I thought we’d begin with a dish featuring those lemons — pan fried scallops with Meyer lemon glaze — accompanied by a champagne cocktail made with gorgeously fragrant elderflower cordial.2 Please put on your garden hats and white linen Gatsby trousers now…