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osmoz KIDS is a fragrant new section of our site that’s both educational and fun. It will allow you to initiate your children, nephews or nieces, cousins or friends’ children into the delightfully surprising world of scents. Each issue will present a different theme, with smells to discover in a playful, simple and safe way that can keep your little rascals busy on a rainy day…
 

Secret Smells in the Kitchen
 

The kitchen is a magical room in the house. It’s true, there are always lots of things to look for there. Like chocolate in the cupboard, and cookies hidden in the cookie jar, or the vegetables that Mom keeps in the fridge, and then there are all those little jars full of colors that she adds to what she’s cooking… There sure are a lot of smells in here…

But the most important thing to remember is that I have to be careful in the kitchen, because there’s more than just good things to eat there… There are also cleaning products, the stove and oven that can burn, and lots of sharp knives. Let’s not touch them!

I know all about chocolate. It tastes sweet and it smells good too, like the flavor of fresh-baked cake or cookies. I love to eat it (in candy, cake, pudding and ice cream), and I like drink chocolate milk too. It’s easy to make, you just stir some chocolate powder or syrup into a glass or cup of milk!

 

My parents don’t drink chocolate milk though, they drink coffee. But that’s for adults. Still, let’s smell some coffee – there’s beans, ground coffee or instant. What does it remind me of? Well, the smell is strong… it almost stings my nose. It smells a little “nutty”, like hazelnuts or walnuts, but also a bit toasted, like when you make toast in the toaster. Anyway, chocolate and coffee are easy smells to recognize.

Now let’s look in the refrigerator. Orange juice is easy to describe, it smells almost like when I peel an orange, sort of sparkly. Milk is liquid too, but it doesn’t smell as strong as orange juice. Mom says that milk smells stronger when it’s hot. We warmed some milk up once as a test, and it was true. It smells kind of creamy and sweet, like pudding or something.



There’s cheese in the fridge, too. It’s kind of weird, ‘cause I like eating it (some kids don’t), but I don’t really like the smell, it’s too strong. Vegetables are nicer. But you have to leave them out of the fridge for a while if you want to smell them, because the cold covers up the smell.

There are also lots of little jars in the kitchen with things to make food taste better. They’re called spices. I sure do know a lot about cooking, don’t I? Pepper stings my nose, I don’t like it very much. Cinnamon, on the other hand, has a nice, funny smell, sort of sweet. It reminds me of apple pie and cinnamon toast. Some jars on the spice rack have dried herbs inside. Daddy sprinkles some on pizza. They’re not sweet or spicy. They smell more like some plants in my backyard, or going for a hike. When I grow up, I’m going to be a smell specialist, I’ll know how to recognize all of them, ‘cause I think there are a lot of different ones, like basil, tarragon, oregano and thyme… Sometimes there’s mint in the kitchen too, but that’s an easy one to recognize because I eat mint candy!
   

 

 

For this workshop, you’ll need:
- from the pantry: chocolate (bars or powder), coffee (whole bean, ground or instant), biscuits
- from the refrigerator: fruit & vegetables, orange juice, milk, cheese, etc.
- spices (pepper, cinnamon, etc.), herbs

Age range > 5