Reference point
Open an undecocted packet of traditional herbal medicine and smell the whole packet.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Bitter, warm, with notes of roots and honey and a light mustiness behind. It is dense, many-layered, and cannot be reduced to a single smell.
This is one of several entries whose reference point is a mixture rather than an object. Golden Star balm, the medicated balm, fabric softener and new car are the same — and what they share is that none can be traced to one compound. Every packet has its own formula, so the smell varies, but there is a common base every packet has: dried roots, bark and fungi.
The value of this entry lies not in precise description but in acknowledging that some smells exist as a category rather than as a substance.
How to smell it
Open a packet and smell the whole thing first. Then pick out a few easy-to-recognise ingredients: liquorice, cinnamon, jujube, angelica root. Smell each one, then smell the whole packet again. You will start to hear the parts within the whole.
Why this one is hard
Because of the complexity. It is the second-hardest entry in the dictionary after hot cement, but hard in the opposite way: hot cement is hard because it is too simple, herbal medicine because it has too many layers.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Traditional herbal medicine
Medicinal family
Herbal medicine is a mixture of many ingredients, so it cannot be traced to one compound; mugwort has thujone, giving a very particular dry bitterness, recognisable even within a mixture.
Scientific note
Traditional herbal medicine is not an ingredient but a mixture, so its smell cannot be traced to any compound. It is the sum of many groups: phenols from cinnamon and clove, anethole from star anise, cineole from black cardamom, and the compounds formed during dry-roasting and processing. The same kind of object as Golden Star balm — a smell that is assembled, not one that exists ready-made.
In Vietnamese life
The smell of traditional herbal medicine is one of the most memory-laden smells in Vietnam, tied to illness, to the elderly and to the old herbal shops of the Old Quarter. It is also a smell that is shrinking fast as traditional medicine moves to pills and extracts.