Odor memory

One of the most striking features of odor memory in humans resides in the amazing power of odors to vividly trigger the evocation of autobiographical experiences. This property has been referred to as the “Proust phenomenon” by some authors (Chu and Downes 2000, 2002) because of the well-known literary anecdote reported by Proust (1919) at the beginning of his novel, Swann’s Way, wherein the flavor of a madeleine cake dipped into a cup of tea unwillingly caused the remembrance of an old detailed memory.

“The memory suddenly appears before my mind. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time) my aunt Leonie used to give to me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or lime-flower tea’, leading him to the conclusion that ’When from a long-distant past nothing subsists … the smell and taste of things remain poised for a long time … and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”