Ambergris Quotes

“At elegant dinners," wrote the French historian Imbert de Saint-Armand a hundred years later in MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY (1891), "a little guillotine is brought in with the dessert and takes the place of a sweet dish. A pretty woman places a doll representing some political adversary under the knife; it is decapitated in the neatest possible style, and out of it runs something red that smells good, a liqueur perfumed with ambergris, into which every lady hastens to dip her lace handkerchief. French gaiety would make a vaudeville out of the day of judgement.”
― Christopher Kemp, Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris

“The odour of ambergris is difficult to define. You belittle it by dismissing it so easily. It is defined as musty and reminiscent of the sea; it is sometimes called the ‘mother of all fragrances’. Ambergris is like a mother, although incredible by herself, she delights in her offspring’s qualities. As an additive, ambergris brings out the best in perfumes and makes a fragrance linger. A house without a mother is insubstantial; so it is that perfumes and certain medicines just do not hold together without ambergris.”
― Shabbeer Ahmed, Djinns & Kings: The Curse of Zoa