Funny, because I’m a decade long chemical analyst, with a solid half of that time doing smoke taint research…
I know creosol compounds better than 99.9% of the population. I live in an area that’s known for burning down… The way I identify fire each and every time is by it’s smoke.
There are ways to impart the essence of smoke, but more often than not people are trying to hide the fact that there is or was smoke.
So please tell me, a chemist, how if there’s smoke there’s fire, is one of the worst idioms of all time? Exothermic chain reactions with organic matter produce carbon rings that get carried away from the site of the reaction is a perfectly valid statement.