"I spilled sotolon on my fingers and my taste went off" — first separate taste from smell

One thing up front: this is not medical advice, and the last line in the thread is the right one — if you are genuinely worried, see a doctor. What follows is only a few claims checked against data.

Someone on r/DIYfragrance described a specific situation:

"So I accidentally spilled some Sotolone on my fingertips last week this coincided with my sense of taste going off. I can still taste but it's like something's missing, I describe it like my tongue is wearing a condom. I'm at about 80% on taste sensitivity."

"This coincided with the evening I had the ungloved Sotolon accident and it's the only think I can think would've caused it. I washed my hands and cleaned them with alcohol. It's been several days now and I no longer smell it on my fingers but my tastebuds are still off. Does anyone have any insight to this?"

Five replies came in, and one of them names the crux of the whole thing.

The short version

• What he describes has the shape of a smell problem more than a taste problem. One reply points out that taste is only salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami — the "lemon" in lemon seltzer is not from the tongue but from volatiles taking the retronasal route as you swallow.
• There is evidence for this. A 2014 review notes that congenital anosmia is associated with lower taste and trigeminal sensitivity, with weaker activations within the "flavour network" on exposure to such stimuli. When smell is impaired, measured taste goes down with it.
• "Sotolon gets into you" is not an exaggeration. The US National Institutes of Health's lactation database states, in its fenugreek entry, that its most unusual side effect is the sotolon in fenugreek imparting an odour of maple syrup to urine, sweat, faeces and possibly breastmilk.
• Its strength has coordinates. Of 42,225 records in this site's database, only nine are recommended for evaluation at 0.01% or less, and sotolon is one of them.
• As for the DMSO garlic taste mentioned in the thread, the database's own odour field for it lists garlic.
• I got something wrong last round, found it while researching this one, and have gone back and corrected it.

Taste and flavour are not the same thing

The most valuable reply reads:

"There's a solvent called dimethyl sulfoxide, which, when absorbed through the skin, makes the person perceive the taste of garlic. Not for forever, but for some time. And yes, I mean 'skin' as in 'not anywhere near the mouth, necessarily.'"

"Is that happening here? I doubt it…"

"Also, fun fact, flavor isn't the same thing as taste. Our taste buds perceive salt, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and umami. But when you drink, say, lemon seltzer. Your tongue doesn't perceive the lemon aspect. It's retronasal olfaction of the volatile limonene you're swallowing that makes it lemony."

"This is another reason why I think it's a residual smell thing rather than a tongue thing." (AmyloidishChemist)

That passage is correct, and it rewrites the poster's question.

He says "80% on taste sensitivity", but what he describes is "I can still taste but it's like something's missing". If salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami were down to 80%, food would read as weak. "A layer missing" and "something in the way" are flavour language, not basic-taste language.

And the great majority of flavour comes from retronasal olfaction.

What the paper says

The 2014 review by Gagnon, Kupers and Ptito in Multisensory Research draws a useful contrast between taste and smell.

Reviewing their own behavioural and imaging studies, they compare the consequences of congenital blindness and congenital anosmia for the chemical senses:

• Congenitally blind subjects have increased sensitivity for orthonasal odorants (smells arriving through the nostrils) and recruit their visually deprived occipital cortex to process orthonasal olfactory stimuli.
• But the same group performs less well than sighted controls in taste and retronasal olfaction — that is, when processing chemicals inside the mouth — and does not recruit occipital cortex for taste stimuli.
• Congenital anosmia is associated with lower taste and trigeminal sensitivity, accompanied by weaker activations within the "flavour network" on exposure to such stimuli.

The authors conclude that functional adaptations to congenital anosmia and to blindness are quite distinct.

The line that matters here is the middle one: without smell, measured taste comes down. That is not imagination; it operates at the level of the flavour network.

So if the poster's hands — or the poster himself — still carry sotolon and it keeps occupying his sense of smell, the "80% taste" he measured can perfectly well be a smell problem.

The paper's limits should be stated: it compares people with congenital deficits against controls, not people temporarily saturated with a strong odour. Going from "congenitally anosmic people measure lower on taste" to "your nose is currently occupied so taste feels dull" is an analogy I drew, not one the paper makes. What it establishes is that taste and smell move together in measurement, not a diagnosis for this person.

"It gets into you" — there is an official document

Another reply says something that sounds like folklore:

"You might still have a lot of sotolone in you that takes a long time to boil off."

"An old joke at fragrance companies was to get someone to smell neat sotolone. They'd get a brief whiff of maple syrup and curry, then go nose blind to it in a second. By then they'd absorb enough of it for them to smell like curry everywhere they'd go for several days." (Odd_nonposter)

There is a document for this.

The Drugs and Lactation Database (LactMed), maintained by the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, lists sotolon among the first constituents named in its fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) entry. And in the adverse effects section it says:

"Perhaps its most unusual side effect is the imparting an odor of maple syrup to the urine, sweat, feces, and possibly breastmilk by the sotolon in fenugreek."

Urine, sweat, faeces. Not a metaphor: a referenced official surveillance database listing an adverse effect.

That reply's "smell like curry everywhere for several days" points the right way. And it bears directly on the poster's question: if sotolon reaches body fluids through ingestion, then lingering on a person for days after skin contact is at least coherent.

(To be precise: the LactMed sentence concerns ingesting fenugreek, not skin contact with sotolon. The doses and routes differ, so the first is not evidence for the second. What it establishes is that the mechanism exists — sotolon leaves the body in fluids and carries its odour with it — not that spilling it on your hand does the same.)

How strong is it, exactly

"Sotolone is staggeringly powerful" can be given coordinates.

Some materials in this database's strength field carry a recommended evaluation concentration. This series measured the distribution in article #43: of 42,225 records only 802 have that field, of which 527 say 10%, 204 say 1% and 45 say 0.1%.

And only nine in the whole database say 0.01% or less:

Material	CAS	Suppliers	Odour
2,3,5-trimethyl pyrazine	14667-55-1	99	Nutty, nut skin, earthy, cocoa
maple furanone (abhexon)	698-10-2	67	Maple, sweet, fruity, caramellic, fenugreek
caramel furanone (sotolon)	28664-35-9	41	Sweet, caramellic, maple, burnt sugar, coffee
(Z)-4-heptenal	6728-31-0	28	Oily, fatty, green, dairy
Propyl mercaptan	107-03-9	24	Cabbage, gassy, sweet, onion
Isopropyl mercaptan	75-33-2	16	Ripe, onion, gassy, meaty
o-cresol	95-48-7	13	Musty, phenolic, plastic, medicinal
Denatonium benzoate	3734-33-6	9	(no odour field)
m-cresol	108-39-4	8	Medicinal, woody, leathery, phenolic

Two of the nine are in this poster's direction (sotolon and abhexon), and the remaining seven are mercaptans, cresols and a pyrazine — the acknowledged nuclear-grade materials.

Its substantivity field reads > 400 hours, measured at 3% in propylene glycol. By this series' rule, > is a lower bound: nobody has reported how long it actually lasts, only that at 3% it is still there past sixteen days.

A material recommended for evaluation at one part in ten thousand, whose substantivity floor is over sixteen days, spilled on an ungloved hand and still affecting what you smell days later, is not surprising at all.

The DMSO aside

The DMSO that reply mentions can also be looked up.

Dimethyl sulfoxide (CAS 67-68-5, 24 suppliers) has an odour field of: fatty, oily, cheesy, garlic, mushroom, salty.

"Garlic" is right there in the field.

And its cosmetic uses field reads not used anymore.

I did not chase the primary literature on DMSO producing a garlic taste after dermal absorption, so this section stops here: the phenomenon that reply describes is consistent with the database's own odour record for the material. He himself wrote "I doubt it" about this case, and that reservation is right.

What I got wrong last round

Researching sotolon this round, I found an error in last round's article.

Analysing a crème brûlée formula, I checked whether the caramel molecules the papers named could be bought, and wrote:

"Sotolon: no record. Furaneol: closest entry is its thiophenone analogue, one supplier. Maple lactone (cyclotene): no record."

All three were wrong.

Molecule	Name in the database	Suppliers
Sotolon	caramel furanone	41
Furaneol	strawberry furanone	101
Maple lactone	cyclotene	72

The cause is specific: I searched the database's name column using chemical names. This database files flavour materials under marketing names, with the chemical name in the synonym field and the word sotolon in the notes. My query never reached the notes, and returned empty.

And I wrote "my query returned nothing" as "the database has no record."

The awkward part is that this series devoted an entire article, #41, to exactly this: the database indexes by chemical name and formulas use trade names, so you cannot look things up. I measured that phenomenon, wrote about it, and fell into the same hole the following round from the opposite direction.

The relevant section of last round's article has been rewritten with a correction date, and its conclusion reverses. That formula's author did not use other materials because sotolon is unobtainable; the maple lactone she used is a member of exactly the family the papers describe.

The actual answer for the poster

• Separate taste from smell first. Pinch your nose and eat a bite of something sweet and something salty. If salt, sweet, sour and bitter are themselves intact, the problem is on the smell side.
• Consider that it is still on you. For a material recommended at 0.01% with substantivity past 400 hours, washing removes what is on the surface, not what has gone into the stratum corneum or been absorbed.
• This is not the typical shape of "damaged taste buds." "A layer missing" and "something in the way" are flavour language.
• Wear gloves next time. Nobody in the thread said it, and it is the thing most worth saying.
• If you are genuinely worried, see a doctor. The last line in the thread is right, and all this article can do is check a few claims.

What this doesn't establish

• I cannot diagnose anyone and this is not medical advice. What caused this person's symptom I do not know, and this article does not try to answer that.
• Gagnon 2014 compared congenitally anosmic people against controls, not temporary odour saturation. Carrying it over to this situation is my analogy.
• The LactMed sentence concerns ingesting fenugreek, not skin contact with neat sotolon. Doses and routes differ; I cite it to establish that the mechanism exists, not to explain this case.
• I did not verify the "old joke at fragrance companies." It is recorded as a forum claim, not treated as fact.
• I did not chase primary literature on DMSO and garlic taste. I only checked that the database's odour field lists garlic.
• "Evaluation recommended at 0.01%" is the database's rating, not an odour threshold. This series has already established that the database does not document how that field is set, and that only 1.9% of materials carry it.
• Another reply says globanone permanently changed their sense of smell; I have not addressed it. A single person's report cannot be verified, and it is a separate and harder question.