An army of maintenance staff, various contraptions slung across their shoulders, barged into my tiny NYC apartment alarmed by my complaint: the stove was leaking gas. Their contraptions however reported nothing. All good, bye-bye. The sun set and the sun rose and once again the ominous vapors of gas came knocking at my nostrils; once again, the army came knocking at my door, and once again, nothing.

But I was no mad man imagining things. I traced with my own superhuman snout every surface and every ridge of my kitchen, turning it inside out, turning my own lungs inside out, certain that the cuplrit would eventually graze the tip of my nose, which it did.

My apartment, I discovered, was not on the brink of an explosion. It was being lovingly fondled by the sloppy breath of garlic, periodically exhaled by a (washed) jar of garlic paste (that I had just added to my precious recycled jar collection).

But why would garlic reek of natural gas? I ran to The Computer: O, dear! What gives natural gas its odor?. The Computer said “Aye, Aye Captain, what you seek are organosulphuric additives called mercaptans!”. When did they begin doing this? In 1937, a school in Texas went up in flames taking with it the lives of hundreds of students and teachers. In a shocking turn of events, lawmakers did something to protect school students within a span of a few weeks, which was to enforce odorization of natural gas. President Roosevelt received a sympathetic telegram from er… the then leader of Germany. See photo.

Then, pray tell, from what does garlic take its smell? The Computer said “Mr. Alice-in-Wonderland, your rabbit hole has led you to the organosulfuric allicin, emitted in defense by garlic crushed.”

The link between the two I would find at the end of another rabbit hole: the oesophagus. Allicin, trapped in the stomach, breaks down into vapours of allyl mercaptan (aha!) that is released out into broad daylight as garlic breath.

Just as the case was being closed, another bulb lit up: does allyl have anything to do with the genus that garlic and its odorous, bulbous siblings (onions, leeks, shallots and chives) belong to: allium? The Computer nodded. An allyl derivative, it seems, was first extracted from garlic oil, thus obtaining that name, much like how the “but-" in “butane” comes from (rancid) butter (latin: butyrum) from which butyric acid was first derived.

Allyl’s well that end’s well?