https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/07/the-smell-of-old-books-science-libraries
As you may know I have been hard at work clearing out my home of nearly thirty years (anniversary in August) in preparation for moving to be near my daughters and grandchildren. One of the difficult tasks has been to triage my many thousand volumes, each of which holds a special message for me -- books I read as a child, books that once belonged to my grandparents and even greatgrandparents, medical books, science books, math books, history books, school books, and especially books that my children loved to look at as toddlers and from which my parents and I read to them...
So I have been surrounded by that rich old book smell, and memories of curling up with a good book, cup of tea at hand, immersed another world.
Turns out that old book smell is made up of a number of compounds that are also contained in tea. The Historic Book Odor Wheel from the article (below) was created to show the different characteristic odors of an historic book and to indicate the corresponding compounds the authors were able to identify. I added red stars for compounds that are also present in tea, and a yellow arrow for limonene, which is present in bergamot and therefore in Earl Grey tea.
As you can appreciate, pleasant odors in the historic book are also present in tea, particularly in black tea (furfural and benzaldehyde). The "-al's" — hexanal, heptanal, and to a variable extent undecanal, are more characteristic of green teas, where they contribute to the grassy green flavors; and benzaldehyde is found in oolongs, too.
As I think about it, it's the lack of book smell that explains why I can't curl up with a good computer or Kindle.
* Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič. Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours. Heritage Science20175:2
DOI: 10.1186/s40494-016-0114-1.
By the way, this article is open source so you can go on line to read it in its entirety, an exciting and worthwhile exercise because of the elegant discussion of smell as heritage:
https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-016-0114-1
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