In October last year, Australian cuisine received a dubious international honour with the opening of Sweden's Disgusting Food Museum.

Australia's contribution to the museum collection includes Vegemite (of course) and witchetty grubs, but perhaps most surprising is the presence of the humble musk stick. They're simple, unassuming lollies, not creepy, or crawly, or fermented.

Yet musk sticks manage to disgust tourists as much as they delight Australians.

There are plenty of complaints online, from their strange shape to their chalky texture, but the powerful perfume scent seems to be the most off-putting thing about musk sticks.

Their taste has been variously compared to a nice-smelling shop, grandmother's make-up and even "the smell of old ladies at the bus stop". Surprisingly, only one of those comments comes from a wholly negative review.

Musk hasn't always been so controversial in the kitchen. In fact, medieval Middle Eastern recipes call for musk in a number of sweet treats. By the 1600s, musk lozenges were all the rage at courtly parties in the Ottoman Empire.

Princes and sultans enjoyed the lollies, not only for the flavour, but for the pleasant smell musk gave their breath.

Back then, the connection with perfume was a good thing, especially if romance was on the cards. Ottoman poetry of the time is filled with comparisons between musk lozenges and loving kisses.

Musk flavour was originally derived from the scent gland of the musk deer. ( Supplied: Wikimedia Commons )

The original source wasn't so sweet

Of course, obtaining that musk flavour wasn't quite so romantic.

Grains of musk came from the scent gland of the musk deer, a species native to mountainous regions around the Himalayas.

Each grain had such a potent smell, it would have to be diluted before being used in food or perfume.

Because of its rarity, musk became one of the most valuable commodities in Asia. Himalayan hunters could make a living trading the glands or "musk pods" to travelling merchants, who brought the musk to the Middle East, and eventually, to the sultan's pantry.

The food of love

Despite their origins, those early breath fresheners must have been effective, because musk lozenges soon spread to Europe.

In England, confectioners began making lollies called kissing comfits using musk, sugar, rosewater, and ambergris.

Kissing comfits even found their way into Shakespeare, with Falstaff exclaiming in The Merry Wives of Windsor, "Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of 'Green Sleeves', hail kissing comfits and snow eryngoes".

"Comfit" was actually a generic term for lollies made by coating something in sugar syrup. Most comfits were lozenges, but some, called ragged comfits, were longer and rougher, from being coated in thicker syrup. These stick-shaped comfits were typically made with cinnamon, but their rough shape may be the precursor to the musk stick's distinctive fluted appearance.

The Disgusting Food Museum in Sweden says musk sticks are one of Australia's most revolting things to eat. ( ABC News )

By the 1800s, kissing comfits had fallen out of fashion in Britain. An 1894 article on old-fashioned sweets declared that "some of these such as musk comfits, would probably hardly suit modern palates". Although Britain continued producing musk lozenges (using newly-developed synthetic musk) into the 20th century, they were no longer a must-have item for a budding Casanova.

If the popularity of musk was waning in Britain, it was still very much alive in Australia.

An 1868 piece in Sydney Punch describes a sugary schoolyard romance: "I discovered that she liked musk lozenges; and the pocket money erewhile devoted to marbles … was straightaway dedicated to the confectioner's shop". By then, musk lozenges were a treat for children as well as adults. In 1887, the Launceston Examiner tells us that a confectioner by the name of J. Beaumont imported five tanks and four cases of lollies, including "rose and musk lozenges".

Musk sticks first appear in print in Australia 30 years later, with an auction notice in The Sydney Morning Herald. On December 17, 1918, the cargo of the SS City of Karachi steamship was auctioned off, including "45 boxes of musk sticks". Sadly, the announcement doesn't record the origin of the lollies. The ship itself belonged to a London company and, just the previous month, had been transporting Australian troops home from World War I. But the brief reference does tell us that musk sticks were common enough by 1918 not to need further explanation.

In 1927, a writer for the Australian Worker, lamenting the disappearance of lollies from their childhood 25 years earlier, was relieved that "pink curly musk sticks can still be had". So Australian kids were getting their hands on musk sticks by the early 1900s, if not before.

Musk memories

The Australian Worker article was the first of many to look at musk sticks through nostalgic eyes.

Indeed, just about every media mention of musk sticks since has been part of a fond recollection of the olden days. "We always look back on childhood treats with affection," says Jan O'Connell, author of A Timeline of Australian Food: From Mutton to MasterChef.

And there's no bigger childhood treat than a birthday cake. Musk sticks play a prominent role in nine of the cakes in the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book, including holding open the sewing basket cake.

Sorry, this video has expired Pamela Clark says her book has put birthdays on the map for kids (Photo - ABC News: Dave May)

But they were gracing kids' cakes long before that iconic book came out. A 1937 recipe in Tasmania's The Advocate describes a drum-shaped cake with a familiar finishing touch. "Leave top undecorated except for two drum sticks made with two musk sticks and two round lollies".

Ms O'Connell says the musk stick was special to her as a child because, "the size of it meant it lasted longer than many other lollies". The value for money musk sticks provide has seen them become an informal indicator of inflation. The community page of The Gosford Times in 1935 reported a young boy's careful deliberations over buying a musk stick for a halfpenny.

The Owl cake makes use of musk-sticks, Smarties, jelly frogs and banana lollies. ( Supplied/Cath Ferguson )

By 1949, the price had doubled — The Daily Telegraph discovered that a musk stick was one of the few things that could still be purchased for a penny in post-war Sydney.

It didn't stop with decimal currency. A 1988 editorial longed for the days when "20 cents bought you a bag of mixed lollies, rather than a single musk stick".

That Telegraph article also mentions purchasing a "penny packet of musk," which in the accompanying photo, looks a lot like a roll of musk Life Savers – albeit without the brand name. Musk was added to the Life Savers line-up in Australia around 1932, and has remained popular ever since. According to Darrell Lea, which bought the brand from Nestlé last year, musk is the second most popular flavour of Life Savers. Since the takeover, "just over 6 months ago, we have sold close to 2 million packs of Musk lollies. 1 in 10 Aussies are buying [them]," says Darrell Lea CEO Tim York.

Never cool, always delicious

But musk sticks are still Australia's preferred way to consume perfume. It's difficult to get a definitive number, but Woolworths alone sells roughly 24 million musk sticks per year. Coles discovered our enduring attachment to musk sticks the hard way when it stopped selling them in 2015 and, amid complaints from musk stick fans around the country, had to hurriedly resurrect them.

Despite the detractors and the permanent air of nostalgia surrounding them, musk sticks are still going strong after at least a century in Australia. We're now more likely to pick them up from a supermarket shelf than a corner store, but musk sticks still offer us the sense — and the scent — of days gone by. Perhaps that's their greatest achievement.

Musk sticks have seemed quaint and old fashioned to just about every generation that's encountered them, yet it's never hurt their popularity.

Musk sticks may never have been cool, but they've always been delicious. Here's hoping it's another 100 years before we see any more musk sticks in museums.