Stench Soup and Other Winning Recipes

Betty Crocker, she’s not. And when the US Department of Defense approached Pamela Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center to create a recipe for the Foulest Malodor on Earth, she took to the task with a devilish passion.
Her “Burnt Hair” formula smelled pretty bad. “Who Me?”–which combined natural gas odorant with a sort of spoiled mushroom aroma–was downright nasty. “Bathroom Malodor”–a fecal odor spiced with rotten eggs and decaying rodent–was disgusting enough to get Dalton cursed in several languages by her multi-ethnic test group. But it was a worst-of-the-worst proprietary blend that took the prize: “Stench Soup” smells so perfectly horrible that it sends the stomach lurching, the eyes tearing, and blows every other thought right out of the mind.
“That one takes over every aspect of your consciousness,” Dalton says proudly, adding that she can think of several uses for her stinky concoction besides non-lethal warfare. “Odors are one of the quickest ways to get people to move away from something. I’ve evacuated our building on several occasions because we’ve had an odor escape.”