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Why garlic smell sticks to your hands — and how a spoon removes it

Ellsworth Toohey
Mar 16, 2026
∙ Paid

Carlopezphoto/shutterstock.com

Copper receptors in your nose are the reason you can’t escape garlic fingers. Hiroaki Matsunami, a molecular genetics professor at Duke University, told NYT Wirecutter that our olfactory system has an unusually high affinity for sulfur compounds — the same compounds that garlic releases when you crush or mince it. The chemi…

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