Of all the scents we have ever worked with, wood smoke is the hardest to name and the easiest to recognise. You only have to walk past a house lighting its fire in the afternoon to know it at once, and usually at that same moment something inside you settles.
At Cam's house in the old days, the wood fire was the centre of the evening. The grown-ups sat around it, a pot of herbal water on the fire, and the children warmed their hands until their faces burned. The smell of those evenings was a mixture of burning wood, of ash, of steam and of the resin in a stick of firewood not yet fully dry.
Where does the smell of wood smoke come from
Wood does not burn into one single thing. As the heat rises, the components in the wood break down one after another, giving off a great many different volatile compounds. Some carry a sweet, slightly vanilla note; some are dry and pungent; some suggest roasted grain. What we call the smell of wood smoke is a whole chord like that, not yet a single note.
So each kind of wood gives its own sort of smoke. Fruit wood gives sweeter smoke. Resinous pine gives smoke that is pungent and thick. Damp firewood gives much steam and dense smoke, while well-dried firewood burns clear and its smoke is thin. Anyone who knows fires only has to smell it to tell what today's firewood is like.
What is interesting is that the compounds from wood smoke are also the very things people have used for thousands of years to keep food. Fish hung above the kitchen fire, smoked meat, those ways of doing things appear in a great many cultures, and they show how deeply wood smoke has travelled alongside our way of living.
Why does that smell make people feel safe
For almost everyone, the smell of wood smoke is tied to a place with people in it. A fire burning means someone is cooking, means there will soon be something to eat, means it is cold outside but in here it is warm. Scent enters memory by a very short road, so that feeling arrives before we have time to think.
In the workshop we often speak of wood smoke as a seasoning rather than a lead character. In very small amounts it makes a woody direction of scent feel inhabited, with a kitchen in it, with an evening in it. In large amounts it tells a completely different story, about fire and about the outdoors. Getting that amount right is one of the places we have gone back and redone the most.
If you would like to try this feeling at home, the simplest way is to light a jar with a warm direction of scent on a cold evening, keep the door closed for the first fifteen minutes, and sit there. The room will have a base very much like those evenings by the fire, even without a single stick of firewood.
A few questions you often send us
Why is the smell of wood smoke so comforting
Because it is tied to a place with people, with a kitchen and with warmth, and scent reaches the region of memory very quickly. The feeling arrives before we have time to think.
Do different kinds of wood give different smoke
Yes, and quite differently. Fruit wood gives sweeter smoke, resinous wood gives smoke that is more pungent and thicker, and how dry the firewood is changes the result entirely.
Can you have the smell of wood smoke in a city home
Light a jar with a warm direction of scent in the evening, keep the door closed for the first fifteen minutes so the room gains a base layer of scent, then sit back down. The feeling of an evening by the fire will come out quite close.
Read more the story of scent and memory, the three trees behind our forest scents, and bringing a little forest into the house.