what makes that awful chemical smell on chestnuts?”
Apparently chestnut blooms and seeds contain various organic compounds that “smell” to us. One study isolated some of the compounds, those released by roasting, including monoterpenes and derivatives of butane, pentane, hexane, and heptane and other compounds. The roasting speeds up release of these chemicals, but they are present all the time in smaller quantities that our noses perceive as an unpleasant odor. However, not all creatures find this smell unpleasant. Plants use odor to attract pollinators such as bees. Some plants, specifically the Carrion Flowers and some other plants such as the Indian Almond, are pollinated by the same flies that are attracted to decaying carcasses and other unpleasant items. Hence, these plants and their blooms smell bad to human noses. This is the abstract of the study on chestnuts and the chemicals they emit that smell: “The volatile flavor compounds of roasted Italian chestnuts, which have not been studied prior to this report, were determined by
