Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way – A Funny, Joyous, and Inspiring Memoir of Life in the Kitchen

by Molly Birnbaum

“A rich, engrossing, and deeply intelligent story….This is a book I won’t soon forget.”
—Molly Wizenberg, bestselling author of A Homemade Life “Fresh, smart, and consistently surprising. If this beautifully written book were a smell, it would be a crisp green apple.”
—Claire Dederer, bestselling author of Poser Season to Taste is an aspiring chef’s moving account of finding her way—in the kitchen and beyond—after a tragic accident destroys her sense of smell. Molly Birnbaum’s remarkable story—written with the good cheer and great charm of popular food writers Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl—is destined to stand alongside Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia as a classic tale of a cooking life. Season to Taste is sad, funny, joyous, and inspiring.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Food, Science, Biography, Cooking, Food Writing

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2011

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Season to Taste has a fascinating topic, a hook-y personal narrative, and a good writer at the helm, but I am still angrily unhappy with it. Actually it pisses me off. Why go to all this trouble, all this research, all this emotional tsuris if you're just going to make a sloppy mess of the writing? Everything is there. Birnbaum has everything she needs to write this exact book, except the good version. Argh. It pisses me off.

First of all, I love the topic. The senses have always intrigued me. In my science-y days, I was obsessed with synesthesia, a condition where the sense blur into one another (Birnbaum oh so briefly touches on it, a wasted opportunity if I ever saw one, especially since her boyfriend has it). I found all her research fascinating. Her journalism background enabled her to make the science accessible without dumbing it down too much.

However, the journalism background might also be to blame for some of the faults in the writing. Birnbaum's lack of voice surprised me. Her lack of voice confused me because she clearly has a voice as a writer. The epilogue is filled with warmth. If I had to guess, I would say she stripped a lot of personality out of her voice because of her confusion about the intersection of memoir and journalism. It severely weakens her narrative because I don't feel the character's struggle. The characters we meet in one paragraph at the Taste and Smell Center pop more than Birnbaum does in the over one hundred preceding them. Her narrative arc is further weakened by the way she fumbles time.

Time is incredibly important to the story. Anosmics are usually given a one-year window in which regeneration is possible. The timeline of Birnbaum's own regeneration is either ignored or so briefly mentioned that I missed it. Her sloppy use of time feeds into the greatest problem I have with Birnbaum's writing: the organization.

Taste is organized chronologically and thematically around a four-year window after Birnbaum's debilitating car accident. The way the chronological (personal narrative) and thematic (research) interact is sloppy at best. Whole swaths of research are plopped in the middle of narrative passages, which careen into the next passage like crashing cars. The first chunk of research leads into a section of narrative where Birnbaum later states that she didn't know any of the information that she just told us because she hadn't learned it yet at that time. The chronological and thematic should not be at odds like that. It only worsens from there. The meal at Alinea (narrative) comes after a sizable amount of time has been spent on smell alone. The section about the association of smell and taste appears early in the book and acts as a transition to the exploration of smell itself. Bringing us back to taste and smell in concert is disorienting because I had to remind myself of the research. And the thematic and chronological stay in opposition all throughout, which is frustrating.

I also had a petty grievance that bugged me throughout, but I'll mention it so that I won't forget. Why doesn't she ever mention writing a book. Her personal narrative is so tied to the research that I think a bit of honesty would have helped. By not mentioning the book, she creates this illusion that all the meetings she takes (Sacks, Laudamiel, etc) come from intellectual curiosity only, which I'm sure is true, but it's not the entire truth. By putting herself in the story, Birnbaum needs to actually put herself in the story. There are a moments where I think Birnbaum distances herself and treats it like journalism, like she's telling a story about what happened to someone else.

Another petty grievance that has nothing to do with Birnbaum. The book is not well marketed. The blurb mentions only the personal narrative, not the science. I was a bit confused when I first read the science because I wasn't expecting it. Well, this might have something to do with Birnbaum because I think she's not wholly comfortable with creative nonfiction as a genre. It reads to me like she was contracted to write a memoir about the journey back from anosmia, but actually wanted to write a book about the science of anosmia.

Another petty grievance (yes I have many of them; yes I am a petty man). There are a lot of quotes in here. And every quote comes with a full citation of author and source. It's a little exhausting. Like I said before, the journalism of it all is a problem. She is too focused on some weird details. There are moments when she talks about her pen poised over her pad of paper as someone is telling a story, as if that was the point of it. As if she was the point of that moment in the story.

After I finished the book, I immediately looked at the acknowledgements to see who her editor was. I think above all else, this is a badly edited book. I can talk about sloppy writing all I want, but it is the editor's job to shore a lot of this up. Why didn't Matt Weiland take one look at the organization and realize that there were issues that he needed to solve.

Argh. Argh. Argh. Frustrating because this should be a good book and it's not because of technical issues, which is the lamest reason not to be good. The subject matter still fascinated me though and made me want to look more into some of the research, so on that front, Birnbaum succeeded.

[Jeff C. Kunins · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating chef tale + memoir + deep dive on asnosmia

got this because was a chef memoir, got pulled in and engaged by the super thoughtful and reasonably robust investigation Molly went on to understand the science and current remaining mysteries about our sense of olfaction, anosmia, and more.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was pregnant, one night I returned home from work to discover that our house smelled of garlic. I was surprised that my husband had been home long enough to get dinner started, and asked him what he was cooking. He looked at me quizzically -- he'd just gotten home and hadn't so much as thought yet about what we were having for dinner. Nor had we made anything with garlic within the last week....and in any case, he couldn't smell a thing. After a good long while, we determined that I was smelling a single head of garlic that was in a bowl on our kitchen counter -- my pregnancy rendered my sense of smell so powerful that that little bit of uncooked, unchopped, unpeeled garlic was enough to make our entire house smell like an Italian restaurant to me.

I have been struck many times in my life by how evocative scent is -- how a particular smell can transplant me back to a particular time or place in my memory in a way that the other senses cannot. So I was quickly drawn in to Molly Birnbaum's story -- an aspiring chef, her dreams were put on hold after an accident. Her body is mangled but, worse, she completely loses her sense of smell. Food is reduced to texture and temperature, with an occasional tingle from a strong spice. She defers her enrollment in culinary school and flounders through life for some time, trying to reorient herself and find a new direction.

Ultimately, Birnbaum's sense of smell does come back -- slowly, at first, but as the months go on, she regains the ability to smell more and more things. As smells trickle back into her life, she visits a number of clinics, talks to experts in neurology and perception, and meets other people who cannot smell. I've read more than one review of this book that complained about this section -- other readers felt that the explorations of the science of scent and Birnbaum's discussion of the literature (both scientific and, well, literary) on the subject detracted from the power of the memoir. On the contrary, though, this is where the book came alive for me. Granted, I'm a big nonfiction reader and have a particular fondness for science writing, but still, to discuss a loss of a major neurological function without examining the how and why behind it would, for me, fall flat. Besides, it was clearly important for Birnbaum to understand her condition, and because of this, to not include that in her memoir would not be telling the whole story. I felt that the science kept this from being just another "poor me and my tragic event" memoir, and elevated it into something more. (Also, I may be just a little bit jealous that Birnbaum got to spend time with Dr. Oliver Sacks, someone whose books I have pored over with great interest.)

The book did lose me close to the end, in a section on the science of perfume and Birnbaum's visit to a perfume school in the south of France. There was a lot of smelling of colorless, nameless scent compounds in an effort to identify them, and I kept feeling like I'd read the page already; the section felt repetitive.

The book is quite beautifully written; Birnbaum has a wonderful ability to describe scents and tastes -- something that I always fail at. I came away from it wanting, for the first time ever, to just close my eyes and really concentrate on the smells around me -- not just the strong, easily identifiable ones like cut grass or baking cakes, but the everyday scents of life that are so familiar, and so in the background, that we barely notice them. What does a stick of butter really smell like, anyway?

[I read an ARC of this book that I got from the publisher, but didn't manage to finish until after the publication date.]

Review also published on my blog: http://librarysarie.typepad.com/libra...

[Larissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm about half way through Season to Taste and the book is about to be due at the library. Rather than finish it, I think I'm just going to give up on this one. As someone who loves to cook but had a limited sense of smell, I thought I'd get a lot out of Birnbaum's memoir. She was an aspiring chef, but completely lost her sense of smell when she was hit by a car while jogging. Birnbaum does a great job of really zeroing in on the sense of loss and isolation that came to her after losing her smell, and by extension, almost all of her sense of taste. She is able to capture--quite poetically--the depth of emotions and memories that are contained in tastes and smells. She also expands her discussion to other things affected by a loss of smell--sexual attraction, for instance, which some scientists believe is linked to pheromones that humans can smell, subconsciously, in one another. (The existence of pheromones in humans is apparently a hot debate among scientists.)

But while I realize that this was terribly, life-alteringly traumatic for her, and happened when she was rather young, I couldn't shake my consistent irritation at her mountains of self-pity (and overly flowery writing) throughout the narrative. Especially after--against all odds--she begins to develop a sense of smell again. After discovering that her newish boyfriend has always worn cologne that she can't smell, Birnbaum begins to cry. "I don't really know him," she thinks (italics hers). She later laments: "I couldn't detect the intricacies of Syrian oregano or lemon thyme, the herbs that were once so relevant to my daily life." You can almost hear her whine.

Some of my reaction is obviously tempered by the fact that I probably have never smelled the intricacies of Syrian oregano and resent Birnbaum telling me that my life--and food, and cooking--is materially worse for it. There's a scene in which she can't tell whether or not she is smelling a skunk or a baked good, which I have to say, is not an uncommon sort of experience for me. (Except for me, it's usually a question of "food or garbage"--like is this a nice restaurant smell, or a bad trash smell?) However, it also comes down to the fact that Birnbaum obviously had started working on her book in the midst of her olfactory depression and has access to some amazing people throughout. She calls up Ben Cohen, from Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, who apparently also can't really smell (that's why there are so many textures in their ice cream). Robert Pinsky--the former poet laureate of the United States--reads her poetry over the phone and discusses how hard it is to describe a scent. She goes to a lecture about the sense of smell with Oliver Sacks (the neurologist and author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) and is really upset to discover that although he finds her situation "fascinating" Sacks can't explain and diagnose her condition. "I suddenly felt cold," Birnbaum writes. "His words were so casual. I didn't want fascinating. Doesn't he know?" Ugh.

And so, although I haven't gotten to the part where Birnbaum goes and studies with a perfumer in France or eats at Alinea and somehow overcomes--I'm giving up now.

[Amber · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author of this book sounds like a really sweet person. I was compelled to keep reading because I wanted to see if she got better, so that says something positive about the book. Also I wanted to learn about the science of smell, since I lost my sense of smell too, and she did include some good info (though not as much as I would have liked).

That being said, this book is horribly written. It is repetitive. The language is cheesy. The timeline is confusing - she jumps around from something happening to weeks or months into the future and then goes back to what happens directly after the initial event. Also she's kind of tone deaf when it comes to issues of class. There were so many casual mentions of traveling to Hawaii, France, Italy, Skiing. Living in New York with no real job. Maybe that's not distracting to some people, but to me it was really obnoxious. I think that also contributed to my feeling that she came off as ungrateful. Most people don't get their sense of smell back. She gets hers back and still keeps whining about it. She can taste but keeps freaking out about whether she can taste all the subtleties. Meanwhile her boyfriend is in Afghanistan and might die, and hardly any of the other people she meets get their sense of smell back. I wanted to yell at her to stop whining for most of the book.

[Kathi · Rating 3 out of 5]

After hearing/reading about this book from a handful of my most trusted sources, I jumped into it with high expectations. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't think it quite lived up to my hopes.

It was unsurprising to me that the book evolved from Molly Birnbaum's blog; her writing style kept me interested in short bursts, but I found it difficult to read too much in one sitting without putting it down for a while. At times, the narrative seemed a bit tedious; it seemed like there were some parts that were simply filler to add length or extra substance to the book. I was also confused by the timeline of many, if not all, of the events in the book; this distracted me at several points.

I did, however, find the overall story interesting. I learned a lot, and I also revisited and increased knowledge about various things that I already knew. I wonder if this book would be better read as a long article in the New Yorker or a similar publication; I guess perhaps I could have simply read the author's blog.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This writer should be more discriminant when writing. Many times I felt that I was rereading previous parts of the book (even on the same page) It is as though she wrote three different versions of each sentence, but then couldn't pick one and so left them all in... Still an interesting topic.

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been admitted to the Amazon Vine Program I was eager to find a book to try that I would not normally come across. This one, in which Molly Birnbaum relates her loss of smell due to a head injury and intersperses her story with delving into the science of smell, filled the bill. What makes Birnbaum's loss of smell, and subsequent almost complete loss of the ability to taste, all the more painful is that she was set to go to the Culinary Institute of America to begin training as a chef. Watching her learn to deal with her unexpectedly debilitating infirmity is fascinating and is making me more aware of all the scents that make the pattern of my life.

Birnbaum is an unexpectedly good writer. Possibly because she had to focus on the visual and textural aspects of food and the world around her after losing her sense of smell, she describes her environment and experiences in a way that takes the reader into her world. This can be unexpectedly jarring when she points out aspects of scent that affect us daily in ways that we never thought about. For example, if one isn't smelling pine or mint or some other vivid fragrance, can we remember what it is like? It was rather disturbing to realize that I couldn't actually do so in the way that I can recall a flavor. These experiences enhance our appreciation for what Birnbaum and others deprived of scent go through. The science of the book was interesting and I appreciated the fact that it was interwoven with the personal story. This added gravity to Birnbaum's story and lightened the science enough to take it all in. Her quest takes her to science labs, Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory, perfume experts, and a chef who managed to keep cooking despite developing tongue cancer. One of the most fascinating sections of the book was when the author went to perfume training school in France in an attempt to give her olfactory neurons additional stimulus and herself extra training to help her recognition of scents.

My one negative feeling about the book was that Birnbaum kept on worrying about how much of her sense of smell would return, even after much of it had come back. While understandable on one hand, and probably an accurate accounting of her feelings, the overall effect was to make the book was to become tedious and whiny seeming at times.

I did wonder, as the book went on and time seemed to be passing year by year, was how Birnbaum was supporting herself. A job or two is mentioned but only ever as a method of helping to cope with or try to train her limited sense of smell. At other times, she clearly is not employed and I wondered how she was able to afford living in New York City or traveling to France to attend perfume school. It didn't detract from the story but it did occur to me forcibly from time to time.

Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who is interested in cooking, taste, perfume, and the science of scent. Oh, and an interesting story well told.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had such high hopes for this book. What DOES someone do after suddenly losing all sense of smell? I couldn't wait to hear how Birnbaum found her way.

But after getting about three quarters of the way through, we suddenly agreed that it was just becoming a tedious account of various doctors' visits and reports with only brief interesting moments.

After months of agony when she could not smell anything at all, Birnbaum began to be able to smell some things.

    [...]I knew that if damaged, the sense of smell could come back. That it could return in mysterious ways, ebbing and flowing with my emotions, turning around with words, flipping with color or sound. But I had been avoiding deeper scientific understanding for close to two years. I found in the numb months that I lived in an odorless, textureless world that I just didn't want to know. I found in the exciting, colorful months of return that I didn't care how or why. [...]
    I could now smell the milk-white steam of my coffee and the floral haze of perfume emanating from teh woman who sat to my right. But my sense was far from fully restored. I couldn't detect the intricacies of Syrian oregano or lemon thyme, the herbs that were once so relevant to my daily life. [...]
    [T]hen again one Saturday morning, my kitchen filled with the scent of fresh-brewed coffee, I looked at the oven, the door of which I rarely cracked. I remembered the calm I once felt when cutting butter, sifting flour, and kneading dough. I remembered the slow rhythm to the mixer's whirl, the clank of heat from the stove. And I thought: I will bake.
    I began again with bread.

-p. 138-140

After reading that, we thought we were back on track. Alas no. Almost immediately, Birnbaum reverted to relating dry statistics.

And then we got to this passage:

    "Smells plug us in," Jonathan Mueller, a neuropsychiatrist in San Francisco, told me. A friend of Oliver Sacks, Mueller had a private practice, which, according to his whimsical website that floats quotes from Nietzsche and neuroscientist Eric Kandel across the screen, deals in psychotherapy and pharmacology; disorders of anxiety and mood and pain.

- p 164

A "whimsical" website that floats quotes from Nietzsche?? But also deas in psychotherapy and pharmacology? Hahahahahahaha!

After laughing hysterically, we dredged on a little further. And then... well... we just got tired of hearing about Molly Birnbaum's latest visit to yet another person researching (or not researching) how people detect scents (or don't detect scents).

I skimmed to the end of the book to learn that Birnbaum got her sense of smell and ability to taste back. I didn't skim far enough to learn whether she decided to become a chef. I fear that I don't care. Sorry, Molly.

[JudithAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molly Birnbaum was looking forward to start studying cooking at a prestigeous cooking school when she was in a car accident and lost her sense of smell.

Really worried, she realized that chances were slim that she would be able to fulfil her dream to become a cook. She wrote to doctors and scientists that study olfactory science to get some idea of the possibility of ever recovering her smell.

In the book, she alternates descriptions of her daily life with her findings. First, she gives an outline of how the olfactory system works, then she reports on her meetings with various people, amongst which the famous Oliver Sachs, as well as other patients with a loss of smell, perfumers and a chef for whom smell is a major part of any meal.

She also discusses interesting facts about pheromones, how smells may evoke memories, flavor and smell, emotion and smell, and training the olfactory system.

In the meantime, she falls in love, moves in with her boyfriend, and starts cooking again.

I’m attracted to stories about cooking (and cookbooks) and that is what I expected to get. Instead I got an interesting story about losing the ability to smell. That was fine too, it turned out.

The book was quite an easy read, except for some of the science bits, which may put some people off. Read on, skip a paragraph, and you’ll likely find the next bit interesting again.

I had never really thought about smell, how it affects so many things in my life (such as taste, attracting a partner, knowing the next room is on fire, etc.). Birnbaum discusses quite comprehensively (but not tediously) all aspects of smell in an easy to understand and personable way.

[Margaret Small · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one of those unfortunates who was born without a sense of smell. I found this very interesting. Unlike those who have lost this sense due to accident of illness, I have no memory or even any idea of what smells are like. This book has given me great insights into just what I've been missing all my life, which left me feeling quite sad for a bit. Her discussion of how hard it is to describe scents, for which there is no real vocabulary, unlike sound or taste, helped me to understand this inability of people with this sense to describe scents to me. I must admit I spent several days attempting to smell things, which was ridiculous of course. I can't even smell ammonia. My brothers (two of four are also afflicted) were in great demand at school to remove stink bombs from science laboratories. More seriously, one who worked for a while for a water authority, narrowly escaped serious injury or death while inspecting a sewerage tunnel which was, unknown to him, full of some very nasty gas. So those of you with functioning noses be grateful. I was also interested to find that we have to learn scents, although I guess we learn what we are seeing and hearing as well. But the fact that when her sense of smell returned, she didn't know what she was smelling, unless she had a visual clue.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Season to Taste when I saw the blurb about it on the back of another book I just read. As one who enjoys cooking and as someone who feels she has heightened senses, the topic fascinated me. Molly Birnbaum lost her sense of smell while in an accident. Before the accident she was an aspiring chef and had a scholarship to Culinary Institute of America. Then, she had to put her cooking dreams and other life plans on hold.
This memoir is about food, love, and science. Why are people attracted to cilantro while others find the smell and subsequent taste repulsive? Birnbaum attempts in her research with olfactory experts to answer questions as these. In her quest to smell and cook, we are introduced to Oliver Sacks, perfumers, and other scientists, all putting their two cents ;) in as to the intricacies of Birnbaum's mission to smell again.
A memoir of cooking and science, I found it both charming and captivating and I finished it in one day. Highly recommended.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was good, but not what I was expecting. I thought it would be mostly about cooking, but a lot of it is about research on taste and various people who contribute to that field. While that is interesting, I think it could have been more succinct as I found myself getting bored at times once I was past her accident.

[Dana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book fascinated me -- because of the depth and breadth of her research into the senses of smell and taste, and because of her ability to make me feel like I was standing in her kitchen, sitting at her table and walking with her as she, in the words of the book's sub-title, lost her sense of smell and found her way. I will never take my sense of smell for granted again.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the way Molly mixed in her experience as well as research details. It was very interesting and made me certainly appreciate my sense of smell!

[Alexis · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beginning of the book started out promising. There were nice descriptions of the author’s college years and even nice descriptions of her childhood. The author also gave the reader a good description of the accident and her recovery.

Starting in about the middle of chapter 3, the writing became much more scientific and much too dry for a biography. Although I enjoy science, I wanted more reflection on how not having a sense of smell effected the author.

The science writing and interviews with scientists would have been more appropriate for a book only dealing with the science of smell.

[Meggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molly Birnbaum’s book about her loss of smell from a brain injury has gained a bit of attention as COVID-19 has impacted the sense of smell to many of those who have been infected. Birnbaum’s journey is interesting and thoughtful. She weaves together nicely her experience of losing smell, her work as a chef, the emotional rollercoaster of her recovery and a lot of science (even some time spent with Oliver Sacks!) to create a fairly comprehensive piece. While I loved the parts about her life—accident, recovery, personal stories of life and cooking—I got a little bored with the science and ongoing research she did. The book moves slower and slower as the reader progresses. Still, I’m glad I picked this up!

For America’s Test Kitchen fans, Birnbaum is now the editor in chief for America’s Test Kitchen Kids!

[Kiwiflora · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my much younger days I was in a flat with a nurse. She was a terrific person, great flatmate, lots of fun. I remember asking her one day why she always cooked the same thing when it was her turn to cook. She told me that it was the one of the few dishes she knew how the finished result would taste/smell as she had lost her sense of smell in an accident getting off a bus on her way to work one day some 18 months or so prior. Wow. This was something I had never come across before. But I never really thought more of it because she was so matter of fact about it and functional in every other respect; she certainly didn't appear to have a 'disability'. I remember visiting her after she had a baby a few years later and asking her how did she know baby's nappy need changing and she said she would have a look. Hmm, that's easy, makes sense I thought. She always the same perfume too; she said that she knew it smelt nice on her, so it was the only one she could wear. I only hope all these years later they still make it!

But I never really gave her loss much thought. We all have slightly dulled taste/smell when we have a cold or are not well, but of course it always comes back. Just imagine though if you could not smell freshly mown grass and what it reminds you of, or the smell of the ground/air after it has been raining, or the smell of your boyfriend's aftershave, or the smell of leaking gas, or the smell of your baby, or the smell of burning food, or clean washing dried in the sun, or the smell of a Christmas lily? Loss of sense of smell invariably involves loss of the sense of taste - imagine that disaster! All food apparently reverts to the basic tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, or salty without the subtleties that make the taste of one food different from another. White wine apparently tastes like a sugary drink, coffee is just plain bitter. I can't imagine what parmesan cheese would taste like; at least you wouldn't be able to smell it! Smell, you see, is completely tied up with how we see ourselves and our place in the world we live in.

This is what Molly Birnbaum explores and comes to terms with in her memoir of her own experience with loss of smell. In 2005, Molly, recently graduated from college is filling in the months before taking up a coveted place at the Culinary Institute of America by working in a restaurant. One day, out for a run, she is knocked over by a car. Although not life threatening, her injuries are bad enough - broken pelvis, bad knee injury and a head trauma. It is only when she is recuperating at her father's place some weeks later and she is offered a piece of home-made-fresh-out-of-the-oven apple pie that it hits her she can't smell, or taste. So ends chapter 1.

As cliched as it is, the word 'journey' is probably the most appropriate word to describe the next few years for Molly as she sets out to deal to her loss. A very spirited young lady our Molly. She doesn't want to deal with it, she wants to deal to it and get her smell back. And I am not giving anything away by saying that much of her smell does come back, but not to the same level of sophistication that the general population would have. And would we even know if we didn't have it. She is chopping rosemary one day, four months or so after the accident and suddenly she smells it. So begins her slow and frustrating road to understanding how the sense of smell works - physiologically, mentally and emotionally.

We learn how intimately the sense of smell is associated with memory and self-perception, why depression is so common in those who can't smell, how those who can't smell/compensate by concentrating on texture and use the other senses to relearn food enjoyment, how the brain actually processes smell and why dirty socks and parmesan cheese do smell like each other and yet so slightly different, the power of smell in healing sufferers of post-traumatic stress syndrome, what is involved in becoming a perfumier, how we learn what is a nice smell and what isn't, pheromones and why we never generally fancy our blood relatives. All sorts of interesting and relevant information and research.

Beautifully weaved into all the fact is what is going on in Molly's own life. Her slow and nerve wracking foray back into cooking, her difficulties in learning to 'taste' food again, her relationships, and how smells gradually come back to her. She is so adept at getting under her own skin and imparting this to us. Her biggest problem it would seem is that although she finds herself able to smell more and more, she can't actually put a name to the smell. This whole thing about smell is just so intriguing that I have found myself much more aware of smell since. I have found myself smelling the pages of the book, and putting my nose in containers of coffee, spices, different pots of honey, mandarins and lemons and that is just in my kitchen.

This is a great story of self discovery that is also very informative and relevant to us all. I loved Molly's style of writing: the culinary world may have lost a great cook/chef, but the world of writers and readers is very lucky that she has found a second career in writing. Take a moment to read her blog before she had her accident in the link and her talent for writing and love of food shines out.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably the most deeply personal book I'll read this year. After being hit by a car in December, my own sense of smell has been impacted (first anosmia, loss of smell, and now parosmia, distorted smell). While my journey is different so far than Molly's, it is encouraging to read the research anchored in her own journey to (somewhat) regaining her own smell.

[Andrea Stoeckel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'We're both living tales of loss', he seemed to imply,'Ones that that change the world around you'".

[Ferg Ewan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this made me appreciate my sense of smell (even if it is a bit shit) that much more. This covers many aspects of olfaction, from the largely unknown physiology, the complex psychological and emotional impact it has on life and the way it is often taken for granted.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I heard Molly Birnbaum on the Leonard Lopate show on NPR. Didn't pay much attention to it, but remembered the title. Molly was hit by a car while jogging. Multiple injuries including destroying her sense of smell. She was planning to attend the Culinary Institute of America, but had to delay/cancel her entrance (she never attends). She is a graduate of Brown University, majoring in art history, but discovers her interest in cooking/baking. After college, she works (starting at the bottom - dishwasher/cleaning mushrooms/herbs) at a Cambridge restaurant, Craigie Street Bistrot (I just googled it, I think Craigie Street Bistrot closed and the Chef Tony Maws opened another restaurant: Craigie on Main). This memoir traces her journey to help understand the meaning of smell in our lives and the hope of regaining her smell. For me and many others, smell is associated with memories. Also, smell is strongly associated with taste. Instead of cooking, she starts to bake instead. Baking more dependent on precise measurements than cooking often dependent on taste. Originally from the Boston area (I think Concord, MA), she moves to Brooklyn. She writes to Oliver Sacks and meets him. Initially disappointed that he cannot cure her (there is no cure/medicine to regain one's sense of smell), she does get to talk and converse with him. He wrote, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. In the preface, he writes about the importance of turning a medical case history into a narrative: "To restore the human subject at the the centre--the suffering, afflicted, fighting, human subject--we must deepen a case history to a narrative tale; only then do we have a 'who' as well as a 'what' a real person, a patient, in relation to disease--in relation to the physical."....He writes stories, stripping the neurology down to what is most important: identity. "The patient's essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology, and in psychology; for here the patient's personhood is essentially involved, and the study of disease and of identity cannot be disjoined." He calls it the "Neurology of Identity" (p.170-171) SLOWLY, SLOWLY she regains her sense of smell, but she still explores the why/reasons people lose their smell. An estimated 1 to 2 percent of American adults - 3 million - suffer from loss of smell. She observes patients consulting Richard Doty - Univ. of Penn. Taste and Smell Center. Sometimes people lose their sense of smell just because of aging. I like this quite by Doty, "As we go through life everything takes a toll. Little islands of damage accumulate unnoticed until something innocuous lets it go, like a waterfall." (p. 181) (much like my eustachian tube dysfunction). Although there is no cure, some recommend - PRACTICE smelling. Fortunately, for Molly, she regains her full sense of smell. Along the way, she attends Columbia University for a graduate degree in Journalism. At Columbia, she meets another student who becomes her boyfriend, Matt, who is a soldier and is later deployed to Afghanistan for 400 days. He is not impressed with fancy cooking. Enjoys just being with Molly and any food she cooks/bakestasty. I enjoyed this book because of the subject - I did not know that people could lose their sense of smell. Her sense of feeling alone; others not understanding the loss. Also, Ben (of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream) was born with very little sense of smell. He's never consulted a doctor. For him, ice cream is not just about taste, but texture - hunks of walnuts, fudge, etc. Coffee Heath Bar Crunch - my favorite! Also, knowing she is from the Boston area. Also, knowing some of the area of NYC when she moves to Brooklyn. Interesting to me that a Brown graduate marries a soldier (would like to more about their views of Iraq/Afghanistan. I think they are still together. She has a website: my madeleine - www.mollysmadeleine.blogspot.com

[Carin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued with the premise of this memoir from the moment I heard about it - Molly Birnbaum, a chef-in-training about to start classes at the Culinary Institute of America was hit by a car and lost her sense of smell. How can you cook if you can't smell?

I think in my head I was expecting this to be more like a nonfiction Left Neglected, talking about an obscure brain injury from the insider's view. What was unexpected was how much research Ms. Birnbaum did and how that was sprinkled throughout the book. Some of the research seemed overly wonky, but as there's very little research at all on the sense of smell, naturally some works she'd read would have to be academic. She is now a journalist (not spoiling anything you can't learn from the author bio) so it makes sense that she thoroughly researched her condition, and as much as I love obscure facts, those were the bits I had to get through to get back to the memoir parts, which I did like more.

Also in this book the author seems very young. Yes, she is young - the car accident happened when she was 23 - but I wish a little bit of the early-20s entitlement had been scrubbed from the book by the editor first. Such as when working at her first job at a restaurant, she marvels that she can't sleep when she wants and just sit around a library all day. I wanted to say to her "no shit, and that would be the case with any job, it's not particular to restaurants." While flaws often make the narrator more sympathetic, in this case her naivete made her seem a little bit snobbish (and I say this as a privileged white kid who went to an excellent college myself. If I wrote a memoir at her age I hope to God my editor would have thoroughly excised all such references.) That said, it's a minor quibble of an otherwise enjoyable memoir.

You wouldn't think losing your sense of smell would be so impactful, but it truly is. Most people who lose it also lose a great deal of weight and even become malnourished and depressed. It's not just that food doesn't have a taste anymore - some foods up to 90% of the taste is actually in the smell - it tastes like sawdust. It tastes fairly bad. Can you imagine forcing yourself to eat a pile of sawdust? And then doing that again and again and again? My boyfriend says that food is just fuel and he'd have no problem with it but since he's currently reading a book all about bananas, his favorite food, I think he's full of it.

But for Molly, the real trauma is having to come up with a new plan, a new identity for herself, one that doesn't involve her becoming a chef or even cooking at home much. In that regard, I think this book is actually a perfect gift for a college senior, as many, many kids have to go through that recalibration in the first few years out of college for a variety of reasons - hopefully not many for as traumatic a cause. And Molly does push through and she does remake her life.

I read this book very fast, and it was hopeful and light, and made me very hungry and made me go around sniffing all sorts of things for days afterwards. After all, it isn't only food that smells. I love the smell right before it rains, and the smell of clean clothes (Tide and Bounce) and fresh-cut grass and the smell outside right now as it's turning to fall and the air smells of dry leaves and a little hint of smoke. Ahhh.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how I found out about this book, but it sounded right up my alley - cooking, science, and an interesting topic of a memoir. I'd like to give the book three and a half stars, but since I can't do that I'm rounding down because it's not a four-star book by my definition.

The topic of the author's memoir, while unfortunate, is nonetheless fascinating - after she was hit by a car while jogging, she loses her sense of taste completely. As an aspiring chef and baker, this is a tremendous blow to her future and her plans, not to mention the trauma of not being able to smell home or taste dessert while healing from her other injuries. Anosmia, or the lack of the sense of smell, is not only poorly understood and rarely studied but has no known treatment and very few answers. The author undergoes searches for hope and help, and while she does regain most of her sense of smell, there is limited hope for many other sufferers of anosmia even today.

The book's strengths are in the science that the author learns, as well as the memoirs and details about her search and struggle to regain her sense of smell. It is clear when she decided to make a book, or at least a record of her work and study, as some of the scenes become less descriptive and more clinical in nature. The very best parts are when she's bringing a specific place to life, as when she worked in the restaurant before the accident or when she attends perfume school several years later. The organization is haphazard at times, with a roughly chronological setup but one that jags back and forth between memoir and scientific paper without much transition between the two. I think that another round or two of editing would have smoothed out the transitions and made the book a lot more cohesive, which would have earned it up to that fourth star easily.

I think anyone who is interested in just how much smell affects our daily life would like this book, as well as anyone studying to be (or who is) a cook, chef, or baker. The science is interesting too, but if you're looking for just a fluffy memoir with a perfectly happy ending, this won't be the book you're looking for.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heavier on the science side of smell than I expected; but that may be for the best. Story of someone planning to become a chef loosing her sense of smell and all the consequences.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Season To Taste is Molly Birnbaum's memoir about losing her sense of smell in a traumatic car accident. At first look losing your sense of smell may not seem like a truly horrible loss, but more of your brain, memory, and taste are controlled by scents then you realize. At the time of the accident Molly was immersed in the restaurant world, getting ready to enter culinary school, and thrilled to have finally found her place. Without a sense of smell food became a bland, largely tasteless obstacle to happiness. Molly chronicles her journey back to taste and smell through exhaustive academic research and personal experimentation. She meets with famed neurological expert Oliver Sacks, visits a commercial flavor lab, learns more than you would think possible about the human sense of smell, and takes a perfume class. Through it all she never gives up hope that one day she will regain her elusive sense of smell.

Molly Birnbaum comes across as an engaging and likeable young woman, the most important characteristic of a successful memoir. From the beginning I was rooting for her, hoping her life would return to normal and she would be able to pursue her dreams of becoming a chef. Season to Taste is a great foodie book with some sublime descriptions of the food Molly cooks or dreams of smelling and tasting. It is also an exhaustive exploration of the research that has been done to date on the human sense of smell. Sometimes the scientific side comes across dry and those parts can drag a bit. I did enjoy her descriptions of various smell disorders that have occurred and her experiences and discussions with the fellow sufferers she meets. It was astounding to me that people can be overwhelmed by phantom smells or can recover their sense of smell one, individual scent at a time. Season to Taste is a unique and interesting book that was worth reading.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The reason why I picked up this book was personal - while Birnbaum's car accident caused her loss of smell, for me an accident during dental surgery brought about my loss of feeling, including taste, on exactly the left half of my tongue. Seeing things from Birnbaum's perspective made me think about my own loss and if I could exchange it for a different sense loss would I want to?

Sometimes I would get annoyed while reading because Birnbaum described how bland food tasted, that she could only get taste in extremes like overpoweringly sweet or sour, but I would yell at the book, "At least you had something!" (Yes, I talk and sometimes yell at books) How awful it is to smell fresh bread baking or cookies right out of the oven but not to experience the joy of actually eating them (although only half of my tongue was paralyzed, it completely affected it as a whole). However, with my limited sense of taste I tried experimenting some, holding my nose while tasting different things, thinking about how if I didn't know what the food item already was, would I be able to tell. Which loss of sense is worse? I had always thought of things as would I rather be blind or deaf if I had to lose a sense, yet never even thought about smell or taste until my injury.

A unique subject matter, I did feel like the book got repetitive at times - Birnbaum seemed to go through cycles where she would mourn her loss but realize she was gaining some back and be hopeful, then get depressed again. She also continuously sought out different experts looking for an answer I felt she received within one of her first diagnoses - that it was gone and may come back or may not. At times it felt like this could've been edited into a really good article in a magazine or academic/medical journal, however reading about a different sense of loss actually did help me cope with my own.

[Jennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molly Birnbaum was working in a restaurant and planning to go to culinary school when she was hit by a car while out running. She broke her pelvis, severely damaged her knee, and fractured her skull. It took awhile, but she healed from the physical trauma, but due to the skull fracture she lost her sense of smell. This is crucial for a chef and when Molly realized it might be gone forever she spiraled into a depression. Being a chef was her dream and now what? Eventually she starts to revamp her life and slowly her sense of smell starts to come back. But, will it come back completely, permanently? Molly explores the science and mystery of the sense of smell and meets with many experts in the field to not only try to understand this sense more, but also to see what hope they may give her with her own issues. Over a few years Molly eventually moves into a new career path, falls in love, and even starts cooking again regularly. Season to Taste is her journey through all the pain, frustration, and eventually elation as she slowly regains her sense of smell.

The only reason I didn't give it more stars is that there is a lot of scientific information that, while very relvant, was a little much to wade through at times. But, still overall a great story of determination and overcoming a huge obstacle.

[Rebecca Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just months before Molly Birnbaum was to enter the Culinary Institute of America to fulfill her dream to become a chef, she met with a violent accident. Although she escaped with her life, in addition to other physical wounds she had lost her sense of smell. Season to Taste: How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found My Way (Ecco, July 2011) is Molly’s story of finding her place in the kitchen again. But Season to Taste is far more than a personal memoir: it’s also a journalistic study of what smell means to flavor, cooking, and daily life.

The result is a book that is a fascinating tribute to smell as a part of daily life. I enjoy popular science books, and this has a nice blend of memoir mixed in to it. I appreciate that Molly’s memoir isn’t “pity me” but rather a seeking to understand and recover. Molly’s story, despite the tragedy and her frustrations, is an inspiring one for all, whether you are an aspiring cook, a scent professional, or simply a person who walks outside and experiences life through an abundance of smells that we take for granted. After reading Season to Taste, you won’t notice smells in the same way again!

More on my blog

Review copy received at BEA 2011