Chantrelles, Osmanthus, and Other Olfactory Twins

Mushroom picking, more than any other foraging, is serious business. Before putting anything in one’s mouth, or doing any collection for eating, a picker learns each mushroom one at a time. What do the gills look like? how do they join the stem? What is the colour range? Is there a distinct gill print? How do look alike species differ? Is there anything else remarkable about the species? When the mushroom is learned, a picker often develops a shorthand crosscheck to ‘proof’ a species. Hedgehog mushrooms, for instance, have distinctive icicle shaped gills.  Chicken-of-the-Woods only grow on dead wood. I have picked a good number of mushrooms, but my favorite has always been the golden chanterelle.  While it is a distinctive species, I am a cautious picker. My two checks are gills connected to stem and scent. If the scent is not there, I don’t eat the mushrooms. After picking, the scent does fade, to it also becomes a good means of checking age in store bought mushrooms. When I learned how to pick, the telltale scent of chanterelles was described to me as sweet apricots  or floral apricots. Neither was quite accurate, as the scent was fruity yet lacked a sugar backing. The instant I smelled a pure osmanthus absolute, I had a new referent. Chanterelle mushrooms smell like osmanthus extract. And it is one of the most beautiful scents in the world.