SMELLBOOK REFERENCE · SB-0036
Garlic
Permanent ID: smellbook: · updated 2026-10-14, revision 4
Character EDITORIAL
Garlic smells pungent, sharp and savoury, with a strong, almost hot intensity when raw.
Words: pungent, savoury, sharp, sulfurous. Families: Sharp and bitter.
States: fresh (VERIFIED), cut (EDITORIAL), cooked (VERIFIED). A state says how an entry is met, such as wet, aged or roasted. It does not create a new smell, and it adds no scientific fact by itself: states marked EDITORIAL come from the entry's own records, and only those marked VERIFIED are reported by a VERIFIED claim.
Met in: Kitchen.
Evidence
Scientific evidence
- Thiosulfinates in the smell of fresh garlic (CLM-GARLIC-001). Kazuki Abe, Yoji Hori & Takao Myoda, Volatile compounds of fresh and processed garlic (Review), Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine, 2019.
- The main volatiles of fried and baked garlic (CLM-GARLIC-003). Tung Hsi Yu et al., Volatile compounds of deep-oil fried, microwave-heated and oven-baked garlic slices, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 1993.
Historical evidence
- Garlic and Spanish cooking in an 1858 French travel essay (CLM-GARLIC-002). John Lemoinne, Quelques jours en Espagne, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1858.
Molecules named in these claims: allyl methyl disulfide, diallyl disulfide, diallyl trisulfide. A molecule listed here is named in a VERIFIED claim about this smell. It is not presented as the cause of the smell; each claim says what its source supports.
Cite
SmellBook. (2026). Garlic (revision 4, 2026-10-14). SmellBook Public Atlas. smellbook:smell:garlic. https://smellbook.com/smells/garlic
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