Does anyone else have childhood memories of eating raw green olives? I feel like even other Chinese kids with Chinese childhoods don’t recall eating green olives.

For the uninitiated, which is probably basically everyone, raw green olives are football shaped, crunchy, vegetal, and green in both shade and flavor. They’re tangy, and you’d dip them in soy sauce to take the edge off as you scrape the flesh off the pit.

That’s the first spray of Sweet Taboo.

It quickly morphs into sweet spices and clary sage, benzoin giving it a light molasses feel. Around the holidays I like to make a lot of spiced baked goods to give out (usually though, Mr. Chokkattu just eats them all.) It reminds me of unbaked gingerbread or gingersnaps while they’re resting, pre-shaping, the sharpness of unheated spices and sugar on a bed of warmth. The tone is decidedly in the brown family, but it’s the reddest of chocolatey notes, and played close to the ground.

After an hour or so that sharpness goes away entirely, replaced by an apple spice cake sort of sweetness that is making me just a little bit hungry but it’s not sickly. I wouldn’t even say it would be a big draw for sweet-tooths, but instead it’s warm and soothing, and is gentle on the skin.