Since the The Great British Bake Off finished, you may miss the delicious cake smell that seemed to waft out of the television every time Nadiya opened the oven. Thinking about it right now may have a similar effect - you can almost taste the butter icing, can’t you? This isn’t smell-o-vision but a kind of hallucination. The smell of cooking is particularly enticing and memorable because it reminds humans that we were clever enough to create fire. This meant we didn’t need to evolve a second stomach to liberate energy from ingredients, like cows. So memories in the brain’s sensory cortex are stimulated when we see, hear or imagine a cake being baked on TV in a similar way to when we’re in an actual kitchen. It may not feel quite the same, and, of course, the inability to distinguish between the physical world and our sense memories is a form of mental illness. But as far as parts of your brain are concerned, as you watched the contestants put the finishing touches to their entries, there might as well have been a real cake in front of you. Just with far fewer calories and no washing-up. Maybe that’s why the show is so popular…
Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London
