Kitchen sink cologne and over-egged coleslaw - and how, as with slaw, less is more

When I was very young, I asked my brother (who is six years my senior) why there was no white crayon in the crayon tin. Being older, he was at that stage in physics where you learn about light, so extrapolating from the process whereby white light is created, he assured me that if I used ALL my crayons on top of each other, I would get a white colour. He was only teasing, as was his wont, but I followed his instructions to the letter and was crestfallen to end up instead with a decidedly muddy and unappealing shade of brown. Which taught me the valuable life lesson that using everything in your armoury at once - 'everything but the kitchen sink'-style - isn't always a good idea. It is still apparently true of light, mind...well, if you mix the primary colours of red, blue and green at least.

Fast forward to the mid-1980s. Of my 700+ friends on Facebook, there is only one, a Simon Staddon, who probably won't be reading this - unless I tag him, haha - who worked for the same company as me back then and can vouch for the fact that I was once a coleslaw mogul. No, really. In the marketing sense I mean - it wasn't all mine as such. God forbid, with a three week shelf life or whatever it is. But yes, for a year or two I presided over an empire of £11m worth of the creamy cabbage condiment, give or take a few tubs of potato salad and beetroot in jelly round the margins. And even more briefly, some whelks, cockles and rollmop herrings. Because for a short spell the empire almost doubled, when the powers-that-be bought out one of our main coleslaw competitors (with a side of shellfish) in a hostile takeover. They were dragged kicking and screaming into our corporate fold, and were so fiercely opposed to the merger that the factory staff took the law into their own hands and began to sabotage the production lines down which our products now flowed. You have heard the expression 'p***ing in a pot'? Well, that is exactly what happened. Police were called, and later swarms of management consultants descended on the factory in full-on crisis mode. I could see the writing on the wall for my year-in-the-planning summer launch of a new range, so I jumped ship and applied for a job in Staffordshire. The rest is history, but my friends up here are amused to this day when I say we wouldn't know each other were it not for someone in Essex p***ing on coleslaw.

Contrary to what you might think, that incident hasn't put me off coleslaw as such, even though the fact I had to eat 36 different competitor products first thing every Friday morning so easily could have done, even with the interspersal of Jacob's cream crackers to clear the palate. I still buy the stuff from time to time and can always tell in the first mouthful whether they have used 'aged cabbage', that has been overwintered in a huge hanger in Ely. Then the other day I spied a variety in Lidl that was completely off my radar, and which showed what light years - would they be coloured?/white? - the market had come in 30+ years:

Coconut, butternut squash and broccoli coleslaw

"Finely shredded cabbage, coconut and butternut squash, in a rich creme fraiche and free range egg mayonnaise dressing with dried cranberries."

Are you thinking what I am thinking? This is none other than a blatant case of 'superfood bingo', in which the manufacturers devise an upmarket concoction featuring all the buzzword ingredients they can possibly think of that might appeal to the health-conscious gastrosnobs of Middle England. I am actually quite surprised there are no chia seeds in there. To be fair, I didn't even spot the cranberries, so it would probably have been a waste. For my overriding impression was of a creamy, sickly, very coconut-forward goo, in which the cabbage was evidently too finely shredded to put up much of a fight in terms of bite. Because a tangy bite is the sine qua non of traditional coleslaw, which in this case had been sacrificed on the altar of rich and bland 'creme fraiche and free range egg mayonnaise dressing'. I would rather it had erred on the side of sharp and vinegary, as some of the low-cal coleslaw versions can be, than this inoffensively offensive coconut slime.

Something has gone radically wrong when marketers think that bunging a load of 'in vogue' ingredients into its recipes is going to sell a product. Though I cannot deny that it worked a treat with me!! Fizzy water with a hint of blueberry and pomegranate? I'm there! It may have worked once though, but never again. This was nothing like coleslaw as I know it. It didn't even resemble other offerings on the market that veer towards the creamier, more luxuriant mayonnaise end of the spectrum. This was merely a hot creamy mess. In a chilled food kind of a way, obviously.

Which major disappointment - it is rare for me to throw away food, but in the bin this had to go - got me thinking about whether there are any perfumes I have encountered of this 'kitchen sink variety', with lots of the good stuff thrown in, just too many ingredients altogether to work in harmony, leading to the olfactory equivalent of our white crayon fiasco.

I have given the matter some thought, but my recall is fuzzy, and I would be glad to call upon readers for some suggestions in this vein. Off the bat I would say that Amouage Ubar may be a possible contender:

Top notes: tangerine, orange, litsea cubeba, violet leaf
Heart notes: jasmine, orange blossom, ylang ylang, tuberose, freesia, lily of the valley, rosewood
Base notes; sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, copahu balm, vanilla, animal amber

And also Parfums de Nicolai Sacrebleu, though it has even fewer notes, and Ubar turns out not to have anywhere near as many as I was expecting:

Top notes: mandarin orange, red berries
Heart notes: carnation, tuberose, cinnamon, jasmine
Base notes: frankincense, vanilla, peru balm, sandalwood, tonka bean, patchouli

I am not happy with those examples - they do smell over the top to my nose, but only Ubar arguably has too many different things going on in it. I tried googling 'perfumes with lots of notes' but there is absolutely nothing out there on the topic! Or not in the first couple of pages of Google, certainly. So please help me out if you can think of perfumes with such a surfeit of notes as to create a nose-thwacking scent overload.

Source: incrediblethings.com

I know, I will look up a few of the older, historical recreations from Grossmith...yes, the effect is broadly what I am after, even though the note lists aren't unduly long again. You know, Shem-el-Nessim and Phul-Nana - that style of heavy, powdery scent from a bygone era.

Hmm, if I can't google perfumes with loads of notes - or remember any! - I am a bit stumped really. Though you see at least where I am trying to go with this. I think the more vintage scents may lean this way, perhaps the odd Guerlain, even. I feel sure there is a culprit in the Penhaligon stable, but don't ask me which. Or another Amouage that would knock your block off with the length of its note lists if not an overpowering composition as such. Or conceivably both.

Finally, my parting advice to manufacturers of coleslaw would be: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' and - most importantly - 'Don't skimp on the carrot!'