Never short of good ideas, our elders deodorized their interiors using a simple tip that hasn’t aged a bit. Here’s how to use it again and again in our home this winter.
Long before the shelves were overflowing with candles with exotic scents or diffusers with sophisticated essences, our ancestors already knew how to envelop their interiors with a delicate fragrance. Without electricity or chemistry, they appealed to an idea as old as time, where each fruit, each spice, had its reason for being.
At a time when cleanliness and comfort were experienced mainly through smells, homes were filled with sweet and spicy scents. Bouquets of dried herbs were hung or resin burned, but above all there was a simple object, both decorative and fragrant, which was found both in cottages and in bourgeois living rooms. All it took was a piece of fruit, a little patience, and lots of cloves.
Its secret lay as much in aesthetics as in natural chemistry. As it dried, the fruit gradually transformed, giving off a warm, slightly peppery aroma, while the spices prevented mold. It could be slipped into a cupboard to perfume laundry, hung above a door against bad odors, or even placed like a fragrant jewel in a basket. It was as much a talisman as a room fragrance.
This traditional object bears a forgotten name: the amber apple, better known in its old variants – scented apple, pomander, pomander or even pormandre. It is a simple orange studded with cloves, often rolled in a little cinnamon or amber powder to accentuate the scent.
Making your own is disconcertingly easy: prick a firm orange with a hundred cloves, covering its surface with regular or free patterns. Let it air dry for several days – the longer it dries, the more durable it becomes. In a few days, your home will smell of a fresh and comforting scent… like a memory of yesteryear.
