Smells like what?

The way we communicate about smell or odor perception differs from how we talk about colors [1]:

Smells, unlike colors, do not have names of their own: they are always identified by what they are smells of (vanilla, orange blossom, bakery, wet dog, burnt match, tar, rosemary, pine smoke, strawberry, garlic, etc.).

Denis Dutton, 2009.

Keywords: naming, linguistics, anthropology. 

References and more to explore

[1] Denis Dutton: The Art Instinct. Beauty, Pleasure & Human Evolution. Bloomsbury Press, New York, 2009; pp. 211-212.