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Chips smell like ironing boards (Good News Week 23/2/09: Limericks)

London scientists have identified the scents that make up the smell of chips – aromas including butterscotch, cocoa, onion, cheese, flowers and, get this, ironing boards. And here I was thinking they smelt of salt and grease.

Chips smell like ironing boards. Well, ironing boards covered in grease and salt.

I think the research is suspect. I combined all those ingredients and it didn’t taste anything like a chip.

Mmm. Iron-boardelicious.

The lead scientist proposed that the complex mix of flavours might explain why chips were so popular. Where else are you going to get a good hit of ironing board?

They also found traces of cocoa, cheese, and flowers. But it has since turned out that cocoa, cheese and flowers all contain traces of ironing board as well.

Weirdly enough, ironing boards that smell like chips have been one of Britain’s worst-selling exports.

Strange – I really didn’t expect one of the basic elemental aromas to be “ironing boards”.

It turns out that the “ironing board” scent is actually comprised of a complex blend of steam, washing powder, and shirts.

It turns out that the “ironing board” scent is actually comprised of a blend of the two more basic aromas “steam” and “shirts”. However, scientists have since discovered that the “shirt” smell is actually itself comprised of a complex mixture of “material” and “buttons”.

Just like taste breaks down into salty, sweet, sour and bitter, so smell apparently breaks down into chocolate, cheese, butterscotch and ironing board.

Unfortunately before the development of ironing boards, people had no idea what chips smelt like.

In fact it was trying to identify the smell of chips that the first ironing board was invented.

It turns out that the “ironing board” scent is actually comprised of a blend of the two more basic aromas “steam” and “shirts”. However, it turns out they were actually deriving their basic scents from someone who’d just accidentally spilled chips all over their shirt. Back to the old drawing board… which incidentally, smells like scotch. / smells like a brewery.

It turns out that the “ironing board” scent is actually comprised of a blend of the two more basic aromas “board” and “ironing”.

It’s the bubbles of ironing board that make it really something.

Scientists have since discovered they’ve got it all wrong. Ironing boards actually smell of chips.

So next time your beloved has a go at you for eating fast food, just explain that you’re ironing from within.

Chips that had been cooked twice had even more complex aromas, including overtones of charcoal, soot and dust. Mmmm.

Scientists have also discovered that, despite their new scientific breakthroughs, people prefer to eat chips than sniff ironing boards. What would we do without those scientists, eh?

The lead scientist envisages a day when chip eaters will become buffs… “It’s got rich, chocolaty undertones, a hint of ironing board… very reminiscent of a ‘96 Maccas.”

How the early chefs must have toiled to get the mixture of nine aromas just right. And here we were thinking they chopped up potatoes and stuck them in hot oil.

Strangely the smell of potato seems to be entirely absent. Must be McDonalds’ fries.

Apparently fish actually smells like a washing machine filled with chickens, potato cakes smell like a monkey brushing its teeth with a cardboard box, and dim-sims smell like a bag of dead cats blended with cabbage and turned into dim sims.

And, according to the scientists, their own shit actually smells like roses.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the scientists were doing their research in a drycleaners.

If you ask me, the entire story smells like crap. / smells a bit fishy. / smells like bullshit.

By Wok and Mat

Warwick Holt and Mat Blackwell are long-time writing partners, who created the mega-award winning web series Bruce, and wrote loads of jokes for TV shows including Good News Week, The Sideshow and The Glass House. Several years of their raw material for those shows is posted right here on this blog.

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