Sandra Cadiou is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Training Sciences at the Catholic University of the West (Université catholique de l’Ouest), where she is in charge of the third-year Bachelor’s degree in Education and Training Sciences.
Her research examines teaching and learning situations from a clinical, psychoanalytically oriented perspective, particularly in the fields of French language teaching, teaching and learning difficulties, and the schooling of unaccompanied minors. She is also opening up a new field of research into the teaching and learning of olfaction. In this area, she explores the subjective, symbolic, and didactic dimensions involved in the transmission of olfactory knowledge.
We spoke with her to gain a better understanding of her project :
FdD Per Fumum : What inspired you to devote a manuscript to Jean-Noël Jaubert’s Field of Smells and to make it more widely available ?
Sandra Cadiou : “I wanted to shed light on a major theoretical contribution to the field of olfaction. Jean-Noël Jaubert developed the Champ des Odeurs, an olfactory language, a precise and objective way of naming smells that had never been developed before. The Champ des Odeurs is partly known within the perfume industry, but it is not familiar to the general public. Through this publication, I wanted to offer a short and accessible text that would make it easy to understand the value of this olfactory language. Researchers working in olfaction all observe that there is no extensive and precise olfactory vocabulary, and this is true to varying degrees in languages other than French as well. Apart from perfumers, who possess a specific vocabulary, language, syntactic structures, and a broad culture, the average person does not have the words to characterize the smells they perceive. When it comes to color, we have words: yellow, red, green, blue… But we do not have equivalent words for smells. Jean-Noël Jaubert created such a language. This approach is unique in the world, which is why I wanted to make it more accessible to a wider audience, because I believe the theoretical significance of this work has been underestimated. With PUG Publishing, we will publish a popular-science version of the Champ des Odeurs, keeping it to a limited number of pages so that anyone can read it and easily understand and use it.”
FdD Per Fumum : How does this classification system differ from traditional approaches used to describe and analyze smells ?
Sandra Cadiou : “First of all, it is not a classification. Imagine an organ, with its pipes placed side by side. A classification works like organ pipes: there is a floral pipe, an amber pipe, a green pipe, and so on. When we smell an odor or a perfume, we place it into a family, and each family contains a collection of smells or perfumes. What we are talking about here is a language. Jean-Noël Jaubert created a set of words that refer to precise smells. We can then use these words to characterize what we perceive. The Champ des Odeurs consists of 44 olfactory signs. A sign is a one-to-one relationship between a chemical molecule with a specific odorant character and a name. There are 44 of them: these are the 44 osmons. They provide 44 reference points that map the human olfactory space.”
FdD Per Fumum : The Field of Smells is based on 44 “osmons.” Could you explain this concept to us in simple terms and why it is essential for understanding the language of smell ?
Sandra Cadiou : “First, it is important to understand that the average person, who is not a professional in the field of olfaction, has very few words with which to describe smells, other than referring to the object associated with them. We often say, “the smell of this,” “the smell of that,” or “the smell of my grandfather’s sweater.” The problem is that very few people know this grandfather, and even fewer know his sweater… So everything is often vague and subjective. Let us return to the comparison with color perception. I see a curtain; it is gray. There are many different shades of gray, but if I say that it is gray, you will also identify it as gray because, in fact, your eyes detect a certain wavelength that we have all learned to call gray. Regardless of whether this “feels the same” to each of us, we have the same word to designate something we have in common, something that exists in our shared world. Jean-Noël Jaubert created the same kind of system for smells. Here, we are dealing with an odorant molecule rather than a light wave. The Champ des Odeurs is based on 44 chemical molecules. That is what provides a common reference point between us. Each of these chemical molecules has an odorant character that is distinct from the others and has a name. Whenever several people encounter the same odorant chemical molecule, for example cis-3-hexenol, the perceived smell will always be referred to by the same word: hexe. Whatever it evokes for each individual is not the point. What matters is being able to associate the same word with a particular odorant character originating from a specific chemical molecule. So, when I perceive a certain wavelength of light that I call yellow, every time I see it, I call it yellow. If I see something similar, I will also call it yellow: curry yellow, mustard yellow, lemon yellow. The same applies to the osmons. When I smell an odorant molecule, I compare it to the osmon that most closely resembles it. Jean-Noël Jaubert selected these 44 osmons in a very specific way: he studied a linguistic corpus covering 1,396 molecules and, based on their frequency of occurrence and their distinctiveness from one another, retained 44 osmons, that is, 44 olfactory signs (an odorant molecule + a name).”
FdD Per Fumum : Why was it important to you to make this theoretical contribution accessible to a wider audience through a short, accessible format ?
Sandra Cadiou : ” I find it astonishing that we do not talk more about the Champ des Odeurs. It gives us a precise language that we have never had before. It is a major theoretical breakthrough: having a language that we can all learn and that allows everyone to talk about odorants in the same way, to name them objectively, just as we objectively name colors. Olfaction is, on the one hand, a sense that we use extensively because we rely on it all the time, even without realizing it. At the same time, we rarely talk about it. It is not taught, and it is not included in school curricula for children. Some primary school teachers organize sensory-awareness workshops focusing on smell, but these are based on their own personal initiative. They introduce children to the olfactory world: “it smells good,” “it smells the same,” “it smells stronger,” “it reminds me of this or that…” But they do not teach them words that would allow children to characterize the smells they perceive. Olfaction is one of our five senses. So, in a way, we are missing something. At school, there is something about ourselves that we are not taught. Ultimately, what I would like to see first is for this language of osmons to become more widely known, and then for children to be able to learn how to name smells. Learning, for example, ten osmons would be a good starting point.”
FdD Per Fumum : How did you work with Jean-Noël Jaubert in the context of writing this book ?
Sandra Cadiou : ” I wrote the text and then asked Jean-Noël to proofread it, which seemed like the natural thing to do. We made a number of changes to the wording, in order to ensure greater accuracy. For example, at first I used the expression “the smell of the cupboard,” but we changed this wording because, strictly speaking, it is not the smell of the cupboard; it is the smell that I perceive coming from the cupboard. This small change may seem insignificant, but it completely changes the way we conceptualize the phenomenon. It is not the cupboard itself that “smells” of something. The cupboard is made up of molecules, some of which are volatile and have an odorant character. When these molecules enter my nose and are processed by my sensory system, a smell is created in my mind. Paying attention to this way of speaking was also a way of returning to a certain degree of scientific rigor. There are indeed molecules that can be identified by their chemical names, but they become meaningful once my brain processes the information received from my sensory organ. The smell is the product of this process. The smell is therefore not “in” the cupboard. It is a mental construction that belongs to me.”
FdD Per Fumum : What practical applications of the Field of Smells do you currently observe, particularly in the fields of training, sensory evaluation, or the environment?
Sandra Cadiou : “The Champ des Odeurs is used in the field of sensory evaluation. Sensory analysis panels evaluate manufactured products: the odor qualities of a sauce, a hand cream, the interior of a car, but also the air we breathe. The Champ des Odeurs is used to train these sensory analysis panels. This requires learning, but the process is relatively quick. I believe that if we trained the general population in even just a few osmons, if these became part of everyday habits, and if people started using the appropriate term instead of saying “it smells like lemon,” it would make a real difference.”
FdD Per Fumum : And how does this system fit into the work of perfumers ?
Sandra Cadiou : “ If the average person has a limited lexicon, and if certain professions, such as sommeliers, oenologists, firefighters, doctors, or nurses, work with smells and talk about them, perfumers have a genuine ability to describe what constitutes their field of work: odorants, materials, and molecules. Perfumers may encounter the Champ des Odeurs during their training, for example at ISIPCA or at the University of Montpellier. Olfaction courses are organized around learning about a number of products that correspond more or less to the 44 odorant molecules, and then using them to work on descriptors of the odor character of each one. They do not necessarily use the term osmon, but they make use of these 44 reference points. Their language is highly complex and is based on an extremely extensive knowledge of odorant materials, far exceeding the number 44. The Champ des Odeurs is much more modest in scope and is intended for everyone, providing a simple language for talking about something we all share.”
