Pavlovian Response - What Smells Make Your Mouth Water?

[LawMonkey]

Per Mary Roach’s book Gulp, none.

@Mary Roach

The notion that food smells make your mouth water is, science says, erroneous. Science has said this over and over, most recently in 1991, at King’s College London. … Only one smell, and in only one subject, caused a significant increase in salivation. Oddly, this subject was a vegetarian, and she was smelling beef. Upon questioning, the woman revealed that the smell had nauseated her. The salivation was the kind that precedes throwing up.

[ruh-roh]

@Werekoala

Ok, let’s add something else to the mix, kinda related to my OP - since it wasn’t the smell of the meat cooking, but rather the charcoal and lighter fluid - are there any “not the food itself cooking” smells that trigger your taste buds? It’s easy enough to connect the dots for my first example (charcoal and lighter fluid smoke means SOMETHING is getting cooked), but what else is out there that does the trick?

Whenever somebody rings a bell.

[Werekoala]

Frying onions keeps coming up a lot, wonder what it is about that particular smell?

[roxie_monoxide]

One summer job I had as a teenager was working a hamburger stand at the local fair. The lady running the stand had us start up the grills and the first thing that was put on was onions. She told us that the grilled onions were obviously for the burgers but the other reason to have them continually grilling was to have the smell waft down the midday and get people thinking about the food. So a lot of people may have encountered the smell of grilling onions in so many different situations that it is a deeply engrained memory trigger and an association with good times and good food.

[jnglmassiv]

Hot Buffalo chicken wings.

[Joey_P]

@roxie_monoxide

One summer job I had as a teenager was working a hamburger stand at the local fair. The lady running the stand had us start up the grills and the first thing that was put on was onions. She told us that the grilled onions were obviously for the burgers but the other reason to have them continually grilling was to have the smell waft down the midday and get people thinking about the food. So a lot of people may have encountered the smell of grilling onions in so many different situations that it is a deeply engrained memory trigger and an association with good times and good food.

I make huge batches of chili at work (10# of beef, 12 or 15 onions plus a lot of other stuff). Every time I make it, customers will stick their heads in the backroom to ask what I’m making and tell me how good it smells. I’ll tell them it’s going to be chili but right now it’s nothing but ground beef and onions being cooked down. Sometimes there’s green peppers in it at that point, but still, it’s pretty bland. I always assumed they were just smelling ‘hamburger’ but maybe it’s the onion that makes everyone float back there. I could certainly understand of the chili seasoning was in it at point, but it’s not the case.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

*Anticuchos *(cow-heart skewers). The grilled smell of the sauce they’re bathed in…
Pizza, it’s the oregano.
Pollo a la brasa (Peruvian-style rotisserie chicken)

[Infovore]

Grilling steak
Roasting turkey
Chocolate chip cookies
Baking bread
Pizza

[Moonlitherial]

Frying onions
Bacon
baking bread
simmering tomato sauce
Grilling beef (in particular a specific blend of spices we use on prime rib over charcoal)

And a non cooking smell - just a whiff of Worcestershire sauce because it’s always heading for something delicious.

[UncleRojelio]

BBQ, any kind.

[madmonk28]

Grilled meat. One time my wife and I were in a city for vacation. We planned to walk around and then look for a nice place to have dinner, we stepped on the street, smelled beef grilling at this outdoor place across the street and both just kind of knew that’s where we would be eating.

[Svejk_1]

Reading this thread

[brainstall]

Curry. I love the smell of Indian food…

Also that garlic frying in oil smell that comes out from some restaurants makes me drool just a little.

[Dr.Girlfriend]

Melted butter, bread baking, BBQ smoke.

[BigT]

I just find that my mouth waters whenever I think about whether my mouth waters. I tend to assume it is watering all the time, I just don’t notice it unless I’m looking for it.

I do know that that I’ve associated the word “Pavlov” with mouth-watering. This happened because a college roommate told me a story of how, in his psychology 101 class, his professor had the class put lemon candies in their mouth every time he said the word Pavlov in the lecture. Odd that I acheived the same result via just hearing about the conditioning.

[Hockey_Monkey]

Rotisserie chicken. Every time I’m in the grocery store and walk by the deli.