>>Take that "sort of" as "for those with severe olfactory impairment".
>
>'Cho' mamma! I have an acute sense of smell. What else would you describe the taste as close to then, other than fennel?

Then my dictionary is wrong, and I have no idea what fennel is. Other than buying it and smelling, I have no way to know.

I had a theory once (and I probably still have it somewhere) that most of the languages are poorly equipped to describe smells, specially when compared with the multitude of expressions for colors, shapes and sounds. The cause for that may be the speed of perception - two persons talking see and hear the same things at the same time, while it takes a couple of minutes for a nasty fart to reach the other end of the classroom :).