Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the smells required to accurately recreate certain historic settings are not particularly pleasant – among the more-than 500 speciality scents listed on AromaPrime’s website are such unappealing but evocative offerings as mildew, garum, chlorine gas, sewers, and rotting flesh – but, when the company launched in 1973 (then known as Dale Air), its main focus was removing bad smells. Founder Fred Dale began with designing pleasant aromas for places like hospitals and care homes, and also devised nostalgic scents to encourage reminiscence and conversation between residents of the latter spaces, particularly those with dementia. Many of these individuals had been young in the 1920s and ’30s, and so Fred created comfortingly familiar scents from those decades: toffee, coal fires, horses, carbolic soap.

— Read more in Scent back in time: how ancient odours can bring the past to life at The Past.