Of the five senses that we possess, the last two – the chemical senses: taste and smell – are the most deep-rooted in our experiential world and psyche and, at the same time, the least understood.

With the exception of the sensations of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami (savoury) – sensations which originate on the surface of the tongue – taste involves smelling through the back of the throat and, like the sense of smell, makes the connection through the nose and on to the most primitive parts of the brain via the olfactory epithelium.

The resulting unique “hard-wiring” of these senses in humans leads to the “transporting” of our psyche to times and places long ago, with layers of memories both rich and full suddenly “revived” in such real and vivid detail that it is as if we had been transported instantly and magically back to that precise time.