Sperm Whale Vomit

When I’m not playing writer, I work for a flavor company. We make flavors…and sometimes things get a little weird. Wednesday, one of my coworkers was given an assignment that led me to post this on Facebook (my personal page) and Twitter:

What do flavorists debate? Today: whether this chemical is from whale sperm or whale stomach. Turns out, it's from sperm whales (which doesn't make it any less gross).

Twitter responses: absolutely none. I think I terrified anyone following me. In fact, I think I lost followers that day. Followers are finicky people. Of course, it sounds pretty disgusting and if I were them, I might have stopped following me, too.

Facebook responses: the discussion is ongoing. These people know me and aren’t afraid to say WTF?! I feel like I owe them a few more details. They’re practically begging for them. So this morning as I sat in traffic on my way to flavor work, I decided I’d blog about three not-so-pleasant chemicals. I’m saving sperm whale vomit for last.

First up, there’s civet. The name of a chemical, civet is also a cat. I think there may be one running around the Cincinnati zoo. (I think I may be wrong about this.) Basically, the civet has these perineal glands that secrete a musky chemical that’s used in perfumes and flavors. If you want to read about how they get to this chemical from the civet’s glands, feel free to Google it. There’s a bottle of this in the hood in my lab and, though I’ve used it only once that I remember, it looks pretty revolting. It’s this yellow pasty stuff. I don’t think it smells that great, either. Then again, I’ve been to the Cincinnati zoo’s cat house, smelled that smell, and understand why I’m not a fan of civet. (By which I mean the chemical. I have no particular feelings about the cat, although its Wikipedia picture isn’t very attractive.)

Castoreum is another chemical in my lab’s hood. It’s black and hard as rock and stinks like crazy. I’ve used this once (in a vanilla flavor, if you’re curious) and made sure when I did that I wore two sets of gloves, just to be safe. Castoreum comes from the castor sacs of beavers. I don’t really want to tell you about castor sacs, so you’ll also have to Google this if you want more information. For a better idea of what it is before you go to Google: we flavor people, our nickname for castoreum is beaver balls. Oh, yeah.

So enough about cats and beavers, you’re saying. Write about sperm whale vomit. Sure thing.

When my coworker received an assignment to work with ambergris, someone did some Google research and she interpreted the results to mean that ambergris is derived from whale sperm. Another flavorist was determined that it came from a whale’s stomach. The truth? Somewhere in the middle. We did the Google thing again and came up with this: ambergris is produced in a sperm whale’s digestive tract and can come out either end of the whale. (I’m calling it vomit because this somehow seems less gross.) It’s found floating on the ocean’s surface or on the beach and then somehow (I don’t want to know how) makes its way into perfumes and flavors. According to my coworker who had the ambergris assignment, it smells like perfume or shampoo. If you want more information, go to Google. I’m finished here.

This shouldn’t give you the impression that all the chemicals we use in all our flavors are gross. This isn’t true. These are the three exceptions to the rule. If I discover more exceptions, I’ll let you know. For tonight, though, I think I’m grossed out enough. I think I’ll go write some civet-less, castoreum-less, ambergris-less fiction.