Things bakers know: Sniff your equipment!

When I was working as a private chef years ago, I made a batch of fudgy brownies; I slowly melted chocolate and butter, used eggs from a nearby farmstand, and included a hefty dose of expensive vanilla extract. I let the baked brownies cool and cut them into perfect squares. And when members of the family I worked for took their first bites, they politely acknowledged that the brownies tasted like garlic. 

The culprit was easy to identify — I hadn’t washed the cutting board on which I’d cut the brownies after slicing garlic on it — but that didn’t make my mistake any less shameful or wasteful. I had to throw the entire batch in the garbage. If only I’d observed the rule I already knew: Always sniff your kitchen equipment before using it, especially when making sweet things. 

And sniff every step of the way. In the case of those brownies, for example, other potential threats included the silicone spatula used for mixing, the baking pan, and the knife. (Though, as I’ll explain below, the material nature of a knife or a baking pan means you only need to clean them. No sniffing required; in the case of the knife, that would be dangerous.) And perhaps the most common offender of them all: the storage container. To understand why and when smelling your tools and equipment is so important, it helps to know a bit about how aroma and flavor work and how the two can be absorbed and transferred by kitchen tools.

Photography by Rick Holbrook; Food Styling by Kaitlin Wayne

Understanding the relationship between taste and smell 

“Taste and smell,” explains Harold McGee in his book Nose Dive, “are molecular senses,” meaning “they detect and report on the presence of particular molecules in the air around us and in our mouths.” For smell, volatile molecules (which means they evaporate easily from whatever it is you’re sniffing) enter your nostrils and make their way to smell receptors near your eyes. In the case of taste, the tongue’s taste buds are doing the detecting; nonvolatile (non-evaporating) taste molecules from whatever is in your mouth dissolve in saliva. Having detected scent or taste molecules, the receptors send electrical pulses to the brain, where nerve cells process these signals into what we perceive as odors and flavors.

Bakers know that smell and taste work together to create flavor. That means that if you can smell it, you can taste it. 

One reason you might smell it — as in the case of the cutting board I used for those brownies — is that residue containing nonvolatile molecules (the type that can be perceived by your taste buds) is present. There’s an easy solution to this problem: Clean the object in question. Another possibility is that the sniffed surface has held onto odors, whether because it’s porous (as with wood), or, more often, because of the material’s chemical nature; McGee told me that the chemical nature of plastic, silicone, and rubber “resembles [that of] fats and oil — and smellable volatile molecules.” Cooks often hear that “fat carries flavor” — and unfortunately the materials many of our kitchen tools are made of work in a similar way!

Photography by Kristin Teig; food styling by Liz Neily

Keep pesky food smells away  

So how do you combat these unwanted smells? One option is to use materials resistant to odor absorption when possible. You’re safer from odors with nonporous and, more importantly, chemically inert materials such as stainless steel, glass, and glazed ceramic.   

But in many cases, the use of odor-absorbing materials can’t be avoided. In the case of silicone spatulas, plastic storage containers, and wooden or plastic cutting boards, clean them well with (preferably unscented) dish soap or detergent and, when necessary, baking soda and/or distilled vinegar. To tackle smelly microwavable utensils and storage vessels, McGee recommends leaving them in a 200°F oven for an hour or two, which evaporates the small-molecule volatiles. “I do this all the time with silicone ice cube trays to get rid of that freezer-air stink.” Another kitchen staple to pay attention to is kitchen towels; wash them in hot water with an unscented detergent and dry them without dryer sheets. 

Want to go the extra mile? You can take a cue from professional kitchens and keep two sets of tools: one for savory food and one for sweet food. But that requires an investment and a lot of storage space! 

Sniffing your kitchen equipment is a simple step to prevent you from contaminating the flavor of your baked goods. Make it a habit; the worst that could happen is you get some side eye from a dubious witness, while the best that could happen is you save an entire batch of made-from-scratch brownies from ending up in the garbage.

Cover photo (Rye Blueberry Bars) by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.