The Neld Adventure

Caramel Furanone 3%

Part of The Aromachemicals Series.

This was one of the first aromachemicals I ever got (the supplier either doesn’t sell it anymore or is out of stock).  It was caramel furanone diluted to 3%, I believe in propylene glycol.  You could also call it caramel lactone, sugar lactone or Sotolon.  The site warned me (and so did someone from the company, over the phone) that the chemical was extremely powerful. But I thought I could handle it.  I was wrong.

I thought I was careful when I was playing around with it in my room, until it became evident that I made the entire brownstone smell like maple syrup.  And here I thought I cleaned everything up!  Alas!  So that’s what CF3% smells like: maple syrup.  Strong, long-lasting maple syrup.  I must have gotten some on a particular jacket, because a little over a month later I was in K-Mart and someone asked me, “Did you just have pancakes?”

Very, very diluted, I think the CF starts to smell more like caramel, brown sugar or burnt sugar. I think my sample of it has deteriorated, because it doesn’t smell as strong as it used to—I mixed it in with something the other day, and 1 drop didn’t make the entire thing smell like an iHop.  Alas!

If my sample were still full-strength (and I suppose it could be, and I just shaded it better in the blend, but it’s probably not), I was going to use it as a building block to create a Neld/SAFI room spray called Who Wants Pancakes?

So when I started doing The Aromachemicals Series, I decided that a perfect soundpièce for CF would be one with a voice yelling, “Who wants pancakes?!?!”  I tried to record it myself on the Mac, but kept not quite hitting the tone I wanted, so I called up Mark Baratelli the Inimitable King of Orlando, and asked him if he could record that phrase and send it to me, and to improvise something if he wanted to.  This is the result.  All the lyrics are improvised from the theme of Who Wants Pancakes. (I didn’t tell him, incidentally, why I wanted that particular phrase—i.e., that it’s for a soundpièce for The Aromachemicals Series—; I just wanted him to come up with what he would.)

I’m very pleased with the way it turned out.  If it pleases you as well, tack s’mycket!  If you hate it, go soak in a drum of 100% caramel furanone.

-Ed Shepp