Dear Hyla: apparently your cookbook had word misspelled. The citation below mentions a word coined by a French gourmet. However, when I looked at the URL, it did not mention the word at all. Implication seems to be it may have something to do with monosodium glutamate.

RedHerring.com - Isolating the fifth element of taste ...
... may be what Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the 19th-century gourmet, attempted to capture
when he coined the awful word osmasome to describe the essence of meatiness ...
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2001/0209/tech-mag-92-taste020901.html

Dear Hyla: what kind of fishing tackle do you use to "expiscate" words?


As an addendum, my dictionary has "anosmia" for loss of ability to smell, but has no other "osmia" words.