I was driving home from work last night, hot day, car windows open, and passed an area that smelled like vomit. I don’t know whether it was human vomit or not – didn’t see any, but I was going about 45 – but it got me to thinking …
Cat vomit usually appears very soon after the cat eats, and it usually smells like cat food. Human vomit may or may not appear immediately after the human eats, but if there are stomach contents, the vomit usually smells like vomit, not like the particular foods that are (or I guess “had just been”) in the person’s stomach. Urine and feces also have pretty standard smells, but those are end-products, so to speak – vomit would seem to be less “processed” than that. And yet it doesn’t smell like constituent parts, but like vomit.
It is not the stomach acid per se, but the products of the action of gastric acid on food. Gastric acid is primarily hydrochloric acid, which doesn’t not smell like vomit. But when it acts on food, it produces chemicals like butyric acid that are strongly associated witht the smell of vomit. Vomit smell is a complex aroma, comprised of many chemicals produced by the action of gastric acid on food.
I definitely think that vomit smells somewhat of hydrochloric acid. It’s not the only smell, but the smell is there. Then I’ve smelled a lot of hydrochloric acid in my day, I could be sensitized.
Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans are from the Harry Potter series. As Ron says when they’re introduced, “You want to be careful with those. When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour – you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a bogey flavoured one once.”