Mmm. Smell that? Our good scents guide to the best-smelling places in Minnesota

We should stop and smell the roses, according to the old saying.

But maybe we should also pause to sniff the caramel, tarry to inhale the cereal or linger to whiff the log flume ride.

After our recent story about the prettiest views in Minnesota, we thought we shouldn’t ignore a different but often underappreciated sense: the molecules floating into our noses, triggering nerves and firing off signals to our brain.

In other words, all the good smells surrounding us.

But to catalogue our favorite fragrant places in the state, we had to first consider what smells good and why.

Of course, food smells make the list. Smell represents a large proportion of our perception of taste and we need to eat to survive, so it makes sense that we’re hardwired to find nutritious, delicious stuff good to smell.

But we’re not bees or hummingbirds. Why do flowers smell good to us?

Why has Hasbro trademarked a “sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough?” That’s the smell that hits you every time you open a container of Play-Doh.

It makes sense that the scent of flowers and hay would generally be pleasant to us even if we can’t eat them, according Neal Godse, a rhinologist and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

The smell of plant life around us would be a signal we’re in a hospitable environment, where we could grow or find things that we could eat.

“Fresh cut grass or plant life would signify that within that area there should be water, sunlight, the basics for human existence,” Godse said. “Being able to detect that well would be an evolutionary advantage to you.”

As for the allure of the odor of Play-Doh, the answer may lie in how smells are processed by our brains. Unlike other senses, the sense of smell connects directly to parts of the brain that help govern our emotions and memories.

If you had happy memories of squishing Play-Doh as a child, “the smell will instantly stimulate that area in the brain and recreate the positive emotional effect,” Godse said.

Smell is important to our quality of life and can impact our emotional well-being, according to Michael McGinley, president of St. Croix Sensory, a Stillwater-based sensory testing lab specializing in odors. The right smells can improve mood, promote relaxation and reduce stress. Bad smells can generate feelings of fear, uncleanliness and contamination.

So let your nose lead the way to our suggestions of these good smelling places:

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

3675 Arboretum Dr., Chaska

Jared Rubinstein, director of horticulture and collections, particularly recommends the arboretum’s Lilac Hill, a 18,000-square-foot space covered with 198 lilac plants which is most gloriously fragrant around Mother’s Day.

“You can walk into it and be completely surrounded by lilacs. It’s all you can see,” Rubinstein said.

There are also three different rose gardens with hundreds of individual plants, culinary and medicinal herb gardens and aromatic sweetfern plants (Comptonia peregrina) in a shrub walk. These are in the bayberry family which contains plants like bayberry, wax-myrtle and sweet gale that all are known for their powerful, sweet scent.

“I would definitely say the Arboretum is one of the best smelling places in the state,” Rubinstein said.

The Minnesota State Fair

For thousands of Minnesotans, the last, best breaths of summer are experienced at the Minnesota State Fair, where the air is perfumed by the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, mini donuts hot out of the deep fryer and corn being roasted in the husk.

Fair spokeswoman Maria Hayden suggests standing in front of the Dairy Building, where you can experience the aroma of grilled chicken on a stick colliding with the scent of grilled pork chops.

Kristen Donaldson, State Fair info booth employee and co-host of an unofficial State Fair podcast called Info Booth Ladies, likes the smell of onions frying at the About A Foot Long Hot Dog booth.

“For some reason, they smell especially amazing in the early morning before things get busy,” she said.

She also recommends the freshly cut pine trees in the Christmas tree exhibit in the Agriculture Horticulture Building.

“For some people, the smell of the animal barns is very nostalgic,” Hayden said.

Mall of America

60 E. Broadway, Bloomington

Odor expert Michael McGinley said hotels, casinos, restaurants, theaters, stadiums and other retailers have increasingly become savvy about how positive scents can increase business. So it’s not surprising that a megamall should be filled with good smells.

If you stroll around the mall, you’ll catch whiffs of donuts, pretzels, chocolate, cookies, candles, perfume and Cinnabon rolls.

The smell of clean fresh paper at the mall’s Barnes & Noble bookstore is so pleasurable to some people that a local candle making company called Frostbeard Studio sells literary candles that smell like bookstores or libraries.

Finally, many people love the slightly chlorinated water smell that you’ll catch at the Log Chute ride at the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park.

“When you said Mall of America, my brain immediately thought of the flume ride,” McGinley said.

“The smell of this place is magical 😂 might sound weird but so true," is the sort of comment you can find on social media about the Log Chute.

If you can’t make it to your favorite water ride, well, there’s a candle for that too.

435 N. Wabasha St., St. Paul

A downtown St. Paul fixture for more than 90 years, Candyland routinely emits mouthwatering smells of fudge, melted chocolate and freshly popped popcorn.

But even more powerfully tempting is the heady scent of butter and brown sugar being heated up in copper kettles to make the caramel used in chocolate candies and to coat popcorn and apples.

“It’s a great aroma,” said Candyland president and owner Brenda Lamb. “If caramel is being cooked, that will overwhelm everything.”

Lamb said the store typically makes about 200 pounds of caramel a day, and double that during the winter holidays.

“It’s an identifying scent out on the street,” Lamb said. “It’s always been an asset for us.”

Penzeys Spices

674 Grand Av., St Paul

One of the biggest and oldest retail locations in the Penzeys Spices chain, this store, located in a space that once housed a Crocus Hill grocery store, is full of the subtle aromas of jar after jar of herbs and cinnamon, peppers and curries.

Store manager Liz Graham said customers frequently say, “It smells so good. If only you could bottle this scent.”

701 W. 5th St., Northfield

Northfield has long touted itself as the land of cows, colleges and contentment. Maybe it should also boast about the smell of breakfast cereal.

Malt-0-Meal has long been produced in a mill in Northfield, and Malt-O-Meal’s Post Consumer Brands also makes cereals like Pebbles, Grape-Nuts and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Jane Bartho, president of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce & Tourism, said residents say they can detect scents of chocolate, maple syrup and cinnamon wafting over the town, depending on what’s being produced at the cereal plant.

“It permeates the whole town,” she said. She said she’s even considered proposing a billboard that says, “Northfield ... it even smells good.”

500 W. Hwy. 61, Grand Marais

Nostalgia might play a part in why the workshops at the North House Folk School smell nice.

After all, the school specializes in teaching ancient and traditional crafts, like building wooden boats, basket making, timber framing, wood carving and making artisan foods.

The smell of fresh cut birch, ash and cedar might remind you of your grandfather’s workshop. The bread baking in the wood-fired oven might remind you of your grandmother’s kitchen. Warm, resiny pine tar could bring back memories of the wooden skis you owned 50 years ago.

It’s a smell of what’s ahead as much as it’s a smell of the past.

Minnesota parks

Fresh air is a pretty good smell on its own, which you can find at any Minnesota state park.

One specific location suggested by Sara Joy Berhow, with the Minnesota DNR’s parks and trails division, is Preacher’s Grove in Itasca State Park in Pinewood, Minn.

There you can experience “a heavily wooded trail surrounded by red pines, with the scent of pine needles underfoot and the trees overhead.”

Neal Godse, the University of Minnesota rhinologist, likes the smell of the tall grasses in the open meadows at Lake Elmo Park Reserve.

Como Park Conservatory

1225 Estabrook Dr., St. Paul

In the dead of winter, when you generally can’t smell much outside, it can be pretty nice to duck into the warm, green, humid environment of the Como Park Conservatory and get an odor reminder.