Why is food more fragrant when it’s hot rather than when it’s cold?
In: Chemistry
Not a chemistry/anatomy buff, but here goes:
Smells are like tiny little flavor bubbles (particles) that bounce around in the air until you breathe them in and they bounce around up your nose until they hit your smell detector (olfactory nerve). In order for your smell detector to detect smells, you need moisture, which exists in your nose as mucus (snot).
When the flavor bubbles hit your snot, it gets turned into signals for your brain (neurotransmitters).
But the thing is that when you put that snot moisture together with heat, the flavor bubbles bounce around faster, and the more they bounce around the more you can smell them.
So hot smells are bouncing around faster than cold smells, plus hot smells have more moisture to carry the flavor particles through the air and into your nose, and that’s why you smell hot things easier than cold things.
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