Lilacs
Birthday cake/ fresh donuts.

Slainte!

the smell of fresh cut grass has a chemical signal that the grass emits in response to injury... in an attempt to warm other grass nearby.

The smell of fresh cut grass is essentially a "warning signal" released by the plant when it's injured, acting as a distress call to nearby plants, signaling potential danger and prompting them to activate their own defense mechanisms; this scent is produced by chemicals called "green leaf volatiles" (GLVs) which are released when the grass is cut or damaged.

And now you have ruined my favorite smell!!

Ok, I am changing my answer to the bottoms of my dogs' feet (really...I do love that smell!).

It's a short chain aldehyde with the double bond & carbonyl on the same isometric plane.
People are so sensitive to the odor that it takes under ¼th part per billion to detect it!
Early in career, I did a decent amount of work in flavors & fragrances.
You are spot on. The release of it is, indeed, part of the plant's defense mechanism.
There are other oxygen bearing compounds released, but this one is what we detect the best.

actually the aroma of chlorophyll, and I love the smell. Turns out chlorophyll has a minty smell.

And I totally associate it [cut grass] w The Return of Spring: bright green little leaves, first flowers, later crabapple trees & peonies, lighter, but full size green leaves, and then the Best Of Summer (low humidity, low 80's), full green trees, fancy roses, hydrangeas, lotuses (in botanic garden), etc.

Heh, just about any "green prompt" sends me into exulting those seasons' glorious verdency, and vivid colors, but especially during "the long, dark months" here in the more northernly States.

..a preventative. It's really a bug repellent.
Hexenal is an unsaturated chain only 5 carbons removed from formaldehyde. Bugs, as you probably guessed, hate formaldehyde. Many of them excrete formic acid as well waste, to stay alive.
So, that defense mechanism is a deterrent to pests.
They aren't reacting to damage. The hexenal is just in there & cutting lets a ttiny bit out.

Wet sage?

I can't tell you how many times my lilacs just start to bloom or are in full bloom & it snows.

Years ago I worked down the street from the original Celestial Seasonings tea plant & everyday you'd stop out of your car at work & the air would smell of cinnamon or peppermint or orange or any number of other wonderful scents. It was a nice little treat before going into the office.

Since we're talking noses, fellow DUer Cattledog posted this fascinating article about dogs noses, in the Pets forum.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/why-taking-your-dog-on-a-sniffari-will-tire-them-out-more-than-a-walk

I actually worked on a process to make ocimine for our fragrance division early with my last company.
Lilac fragrance is really popular as a room deodorizer.
We were able to do it but the enzyme used to catalyze the reaction was expensive so end users stayed with ethyl acetate.
I used to "dazzle" people (kidding) by taking white wine and vinegar (in equal amount, but there is way more alcohol in the wine than acetic acid in the vinegar), then a drop or 2 or a sulfuric or hydrochloric acid drain cleaner.
Hold the goblet over a candle & swirl, & you get the smell of lilacs (sort of).. Definitely a pleasant, flower like odor.
Honestly, people did think it was cool! Honest!

we were in Paris one of the girls on the trip forgot her purse at a club. Since I spoke French she and I and a few other walked the streets of Paris at 3-4-5 am retracing her steps. On every block was a bakery. The croissants and like smelled so good cooking. Just when you'd be out of range of one bakery smell you'd turn a corner and there would be another.

But not together, lol.

the smell.

and I remember from a single magic 24 hours in Paris from nearly 20 years ago.

More nostalgic: bacon cooking and wafting upstairs at my grandmother's house years ago.. Still miss her...

When I was growing up on Long Island N.Y. there was a local donut shop. They ground their own coffee and of course baked on-site. The combo of baking donuts and coffee was heavenly.

Fresh mowed grass, pine trees, puppy breath, and of course, horse hair.

I have a thing for foreign axe scents.

Very clever. Or would that be cleaver?

I named it Beaver. Beaver the Cleaver.

I love the smell of lilacs via a breeze in spring.

Made it to the World 100 at Eldora and Knoxville Nationals for Latemodels. We used to do speedweeks and Wildwest Shootout. I ran an open wheel modified for 10 years in the 80's and 90's. Spectating is a lot cheaper.

their fragrance is wonderful.

grass and lilacs. I also love the smell of my rosemary bushes when I am sitting on our side patio with the dogs and the bees are happily enjoying the rosemary bushes.

rosemary. I will have to give it a try next summer.

... (they have this amazing fruity/floral odor), or what I used think was the "salt air" near the ocean, but now that I live next to a Great Lake, assume is a seaweed odor that you get on occasional summer days.

I know, weird.

Koz

The dried herb is good too.
Mmmmmmm

garden but it didn't take. I might plant an herb garden outside next year.

My favorite herb, by far.


Koz

zippo lighters
bonfires, but not when the bonfire smokes follows people
vanilla
maple
bbq
whole coffee beans
fresh brewed coffee

smells. Thank you Niagara.

For some reason, smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. Think of a smell and you'll rarely think of just the smell.

Bread baking. When I was a kid, the route to my aunt's house passed by a huge industrial bakery. It almost always smelled great.
Bacon cooking. Boiling sap into maple syrup, you get the sweet syrupy smell along with woodsmoke. Most anything on the grill.
And this week, apple pies in the oven.

Olfactorially yours,
Sorghum Crow

are right smell is the sense that brings back memories.

Lilacs
Garlic
Sage
Cinnamon

Chinese food while driving home from picking up takeout.

Agree wholeheartedly about bread while it is baking, and also the smell of the yeast when you first dissolve it in the warm water.

And my nurse self likes the smell of Betadine/iodine

Maricopa County Judge was paid off.

Ahhhh 😌

I make it in a pan with oil. Microwaved is crap!

I grew up on the West Coast right by the ocean. Whenever we went away and came back I could lower the car window and smell the sea. It was home.

... almost makes getting up in the morning worthwhile.

Honorable mention to musty old books that haven't been opened for a few centuries. You can get that in libraries and used bookstores.

-- Mal

Also, freshly mown grass, German riesling wine, and petrichor.

Especially in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. ymmmmmmm.....

Second: freshly bathed baby

.

coffee, cat fur, rain on a warm sidewalk, real Christmas trees, and aviation fuel (100LL),

In the AZ desert

Science says that another persons underlying scent can determine attraction towards them.

after a day of raking, burning those piles + prepping the yard for winter...

It was better than any after shave... It flavored my beloved's hair + flannel shirts...
This time of year is so bittersweet w/ his passing... yet it flavors some sweet,
sweet memories...

Sweet ones of your beloved.

First is a pipe tobacco shop and the second is the nostalgic smell of castor oil as was used in now vintage racing cars.

Years ago I drove an Alfa Romeo and one year (mid 1980s I think) it was the featured marque at the Monterey Historic Races. The historic harkened back to the days when the tires were skinny and the drivers were fat. That was the year that the Alfa Romeo factory had prepared an Alfa Tipo 51 (?) from their museum in Milano and shipped it to California so that the 72 year old Juan Fangio (who had driven it to his fifth Grand Prix championship) could demonstrate its speed and beauty and fill the air with the shriek of a high revving straight eight.

I spent four days there camping out (and smoking a pipe). I was up early on Friday morning and wandered over to watch the warm-up session for Grand Prix cars from the twenties and thirties. I found there someone I knew; an elderly fellow named Howie who at age 80 or so more or less volunteered at a local Alfa garage so that he could run parts and generally act as a gopher just so he could be around sports cars. I had always assumed that he had had some involvement with racing cars in Europe. There was, hung about the track, the aroma of burning castor oil which I always had found so enfolded in the love and lore of fine old racing cars and their histories. On this morning session the cars were deep red Alfa P2s and light blue supercharged Bugatti 36sc and British Racing Green Sunbeams (IIRC).

When I said good morning to Howie I saw that he had tears in his eyes. He said that the vapor burned. I do not think he told me the truth.

Freshly mown grass
Frying bacon
Brewing coffee
Irish Spring soap
Coast soap
Magnolias
Honeysuckles, even though they are nuisance plants.

Actually TABU perfume which is expensive and hard to find.



Tikki

freshly poured hot fudge on a Sundae,
fresh baked chocolate chocolate chip brownies.

Fresh peaches [once I walked by a partly specialty food store in early in the
peach season, they'd stacked them on an outside bin right by the Entrance. A mini cloud of aroma wafted right up! I almost "swooned" they smelled so good.]

A more uncommon baking story. 😄
We - my dad, sis and I were assigned to get the freshly baked big, soft, salted
pretzels 🥨 you see with some street venders, or in a German Beer Garten for an extended family get together that weekend.

So I guess it was around 80°F+ maaaaybe closer to 85°F, but I don't think it was humid.

We go into this ? 3 story high ceiiinged bakery somewhere in The Bronx. It's got this ?10+ ft wide, ?2 1/2 ft, maybe two of them - this is like 1967, or so.
It feels like ?110°F in there!

They open the oven door. Steam rises! There's more than a ? hundred & fifty pretzels in there! Smelled sooo toasty! 😄
They shovel a bunch into 2, maybe 3 big brown paper shopping bags! We carry them back to the trunk of our car; which after 110°F inside; 80°F - 85°F feels coolish!

Dad lets us each have a still warm pretzel. Crunchy outside, soft inside. Felt like magic! 🥰

Finally the fir, or pine tree smell near, and at Christmas time on the streets of NYC when the tree sellers come down. More magic!

The ocean.

Also, the smell of curing tobacco is so awesome. I no longer smoke tobacco, but the curing of it is still the best smell. I used to love driving around Durham in the fall because of this.

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