Have you ever wondered about the accuracy of the descriptions in chemical manuals of what different compounds smell like? "Sure," you say, "the book says that this smells like cheese, but does that really help me in my daily life?"
Well, worry no more. Dylan Stiles does the experiment so you don't have to.
(If you haven't responded to the poll question below, please consider it...)
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Dylan describes the organic acids accurately - lots of nose-wrinkling spoilage/armpit odors there. Then you've got your amines, which go from variations on spoiled fish all the way to compounds like (I'm not making these up) the noxious diamines putrescine and cadaverine.
And that's not even mentioning the phosphines, phosphites, and pyridines, which are very vile indeed but have no easily referenced comparisons. They're sui generis, which is probably a good thing.
I'm still waiting for Karl Sharpless to release a catalogue of the flavours of heavy metal organometallics.
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