Smells, Memories and Emotions -- Gabri's Muffin Platter Part 2

by Libby

'Muffins?’...‘... a special tribute to Jane called “Charles de Mills”.’ And with that Gabri disappeared and reappeared a moment later with a platter holding rings of muffins marvelously decorated with fruit and roses...‘You mentioned the Charles de Mills rose.’ ‘Jane’s favorite. He’s not just any rose, Chief Inspector. He’s considered by rosarians to be one of the finest in the world. An old garden rose...That’s why I made the muffins from rose water, as a homage to Jane. Then I ate them, as you saw. I always eat my pain.’ (Still Life, Kindle, p.84, 86)

Funny how we connect to people, events, times and emotions through our sense of smell. Gabri's memory of and love for Jane Neal will always be tied to those roses, their fragrance and rose-scented muffins.

While I could understand Gabri eating his pain over Jane's death, the connections made to the fragrant roses and scented muffins were stronger for me. Amy and I laughed about our different perceptions and interpretations here. I enthused over the sensory world of rose-scented muffins and the decorated platter, while Amy related to and then wrote insightfully about Gabri eating his pain (Sept 13, 2015 post). It's a reminder of how we can see the same things differently, based on our respective experiences and biases.

Lorraine Lee, a deeply fragrant Australian cultivar

Mention a rose and I think of fragrance, with pleasant memories evoked. For me, it is two roses (Lorraine Lee and Cécile Brünner) from my childhood that I grow in my garden today. Drinking in their fragrance, I am transported back to my parents' garden with feelings of comfort and the nostalgia of simpler, sweet times.

Cécile Brünner, an old/heritage fragrant French rose

Charles de Mills, old/heritage very fragrant bush rose

http://paulbardenroses.com/gallicas/demills.html

Some smells we just love and our spirits lift as we breathe them in. For me, the smell of drifts of autumn leaves, promising the compost that they will become, springs to mind. But some smells transport us to another time, remind us of a place, a person, something long forgotten or tucked away in the back of our mind.  And this can be accompanied by all sorts of feelings;  joy, comfort, calmness or disquiet, melancholy, distress. Emotional responses to scents are, of course, a very personal thing. Just as a scent can trigger pleasant physical and emotional responses in one person, so can it trigger negative responses in another. While someone else might have no response at all.

The associations between smells, memories and emotions has been pretty well established. Some behavioural studies suggest that our sense of smell is more strongly tied to bringing back memories, and associated emotions and feelings, than any of our other senses. These odour-evoked memories tend to be from earlier in life. On reflection, most of mine are from early childhood into my teens. The smell of fig leaves has travelled with me since the very young age of two when I first visited my maternal grandmother's home, on the other side of the country, with my mother. Inhaling the scent of those leaves always gives me vivid glimpses of being in my grandmother's garden, and my first sense of being in the company of women who cherished me.

There are writers who propel us into sensual worlds. Louise Penny is one. The sensory elements that she uses so richly in her writing, makes it very real. I love the way she engages our senses and draws us in.

The place felt like what it was. An old kitchen, in an old home, in a very old village. It smelled of bacon and baking. It smelled of rosemary and thyme and mandarin oranges. And coq au vin. (How the Light Gets In, Kindle, p.109)

The chapel smelled like every small church Clara had ever known. Pledge and pine and dusty old books. (Still Life, Kindle, p.52)

Inside, the room smelled of wood smoke and industrial coffee in wet cardboard with a slight undercurrent of varnish and that musky aroma of old books. Or timetables. This had once been the railway station. (Dead Cold/A Fatal Grace, Kindle, p.142)

This kind of sensory experience is deeply appealing to me. It adds so much to setting and place and our understanding of characters, or how we connect to them. The way the characters relate to scents, sights and sounds, as we all do constantly every day, makes them believable. We can identify with them and understand them more deeply through what they notice and how they respond. 

Inspector Jean Guy Beauvoir looked round their new Situation Room and inhaled. He realized, with some surprise, how familiar and even thrilling the scent was. It smelled of excitement, it smelled of the hunt. It smelled of long hours over hot computers, piecing together a puzzle. It smelled of teamwork. It actually smelled of diesel fuel and woodsmoke, of polish and concrete. He was again in the old railway station of Three Pines, abandoned by the Canadian Pacific Railway decades ago and left to rot. (The Brutal Telling, Kindle, p.42) 

Now this is a familiar, work-focused Beauvoir on the case. But later we see another side of him with new and deepening sensibilities emerging. It's a surprising and wonderful contrast.

She’d leaned in and whispered into his ear, and he could smell her fragrance. It was slightly citrony. Clean and fresh. Not Enid’s clinging, full-bodied perfume. Annie smelled like a lemon grove in summer. (A Trick of the Light, Kindle, p.8)

I'm easily drawn into a work by these sensory experiences. It helps me to relate to characters and understand how they're feeling, see them in very real terms.

Closing his eyes he breathed deeply, smelling the musky scents of the library. Of age, of stability, of calm and peace. Of old-fashioned polish, of wood, of words bound in worn leather. He smelled his own slight fragrance of rosewater and sandalwood. And he thought of something good, something nice, some kind harbor. And he found it in Reine-Marie, as he remembered her voice on his cell phone earlier in the day. (Bury Your Dead, Kindle, p.14)

Louise Penny never fails to take us a little further, into our own emotional landscape. She understands how smell can be very powerful in unlocking forgotten memories. Who couldn't relate to these reminders of emotions and feelings experienced in another time and place? It makes us think and remember too.

The sounds were familiar, voices bouncing off metal and concrete, shoes screeching on hard floors, but it was the smells that had transported her (Isabelle Lacoste). Of books and cleaner, of lunches languishing and rotting behind hundreds of lockers. And fear. High school smelled of that more than anything else, even more than sweaty feet, cheap perfume and rotten bananas. (The Cruellest Month, Kindle, p.324)

It had been a long while since Inspector Langlois had been in a library. Not since his school days. A time filled with new experiences and the aromas that would be forever associated with them. Gym socks. Rotting bananas in lockers. Sweat. Old Spice cologne. Herbal Essence shampoo on the hair of girls he kissed, and more. A scent so sweet, so filled with longing his reaction was still physical whenever he smelt it. And libraries. Quiet. Calm. A harbor from the turmoil of teenage life. (Bury Your Dead, Kindle, p.58)

I felt like I was stepping back with Lacoste and Langlois. These experiences resonated; some of them fond, some cringeworthy or disturbing for the awkwardness, uncertainties and fears of those years. Not only that...I'd always shamefully thought it was just me with the grotty habit, of letting cheese and 'something' sandwiches, and bananas, go mouldy in my locker! What a relief!

The heady smell of oil paint and pure turpentine never fails to take me back many years to when I was first studying painting, starting the journey of mastering technique and struggling with ideas in a visual medium. And one day, after a long time of saying not very much at all in a way of ignoring me, the lecturer says, out of the blue, 'Your work is very expressive. And you have a wonderful sense of colour.' And from the shock of it, a feeling emerges that maybe there might be something there worth pursuing. A small nudge onto the pathway towards self-belief? 

 

Now, however, I am lost in the heady perfume of rose syrup as I delight in the preparation of a dessert of rose-scented muffins, inspired by Gabri, to share with two girlfriends coming to lunch.

Rose-scented muffins 

What better way to scent a muffin than drench it with a wonderfully fragrant rose syrup! There are certain scents and flavours that just go together. Rose water, honey, lemon and pistachios are made for each other, so they are the basis of this recipe. The way they come together (and it's really very simple) elevates these muffins into quite the dessert!

The trick is to generously add the rose syrup to the pistachio muffins as they emerge from the oven. The freshness and potency of the rose flavour is ensured if it is added after baking. And what could be easier, and quite simply beautiful, than decorating them with fresh rose buds. Served with more syrup and crème fraîche, they are seriously delicious. We made a bit of an event of lunch and I served a rose cocktail with our dessert. I muddled strawberries with  home-made rose petal liqueur and grenadine, vodka and cranberry juice, shook it all with ice and strained it into cocktail glasses. I floated a few small rose petals on the surface. We had a really good time!!

Muffins are a mix of wet and dry ingredients and it is best done gently by hand, for a light result. Make sure all the wet ingredients are at room temperature. The rose syrup can conveniently be made ahead of time.

Rose syrup

half a cup of honey
100g/half a cup of sugar
120ml/half a cup of water
1-2 teaspoons of rose water (a pure distillation of rose petals is best)
1-2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice

1.  Heat the honey, sugar and water gently in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and allow to reduce for one minute. Remove from heat and cool.
2.  Add one to two teaspoons of rose water and one to two tablespoons of lemon juice, tasting to get a balance between the two flavourings.

Pistachio muffins (makes 12)

Wet and dry ingredients

Dry ingredients:
200g/one and a half cups of plain/all purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
half a cup of caster/superfine sugar
150g/5oz pistachio nuts (unsalted), chopped

Wet ingredients, at room temperature:
2 large eggs
113g/half a cup of melted, unsalted butter (cooled)
3/4 cup of whole/full cream milk

1.  Place a baking sheet on the shelf of the oven on which you will put the muffin tin at the time of baking. This keeps the base of the muffins from browning too much and drying out.

2.  Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F. The muffins will be baked at this temperature for 5 mins only, to ensure a good rise. Then turn the oven down to 190C/375F for the rest of the time (13-15mins).
3.  Line muffin tins with patty pans or grease with butter.
4.  Sift flour, baking powder and sugar into a large bowl.
5.  Mix in the chopped pistachios, except for 3 tablespoons (reserve for sprinkling on the muffins).

Wet and dry ready to fold in together

6.  In a medium bowl whisk together the eggs, melted butter and milk by hand. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Gently fold in together with as few strokes as possible, for a light muffin.
7.  Spoon the batter into each patty pan to two thirds full. Sprinkle with the reserved pistachios.
8.  Bake for 5 mins at 220C/425F. Reduce the oven temperature to 190C/375F and bake for another 13-15 minutes.

9.  Remove from the oven and pierce all over the top of each muffin (about twelve times) with a skewer, so the muffins can soak up the rose syrup. Immediately spoon syrup onto the hot muffins, adding more as they absorb it. Be generous!

Spooning the syrup over the hot muffins

10.  When they are cool enough to handle, remove them from the tins and place on a rack. Continue to trickle more syrup onto the muffins but reserve some syrup for serving. I made the muffins a day ahead of serving.

Place the muffins on a platter, decorate with rose buds or rose petals. Serve with crème fraîche and rose syrup. And a cocktail?

Now, if the smell of roses has some adverse associations, these muffins are not for you!