Los Angeles – Pheromone parties being held in the US ask guests to submit a slept-in T-shirt that will be smelled by other participants.

Then, voila! You can pick your partner based on scent, or so the theory goes.

The parties started out as an experimental matchmaking fest by a California woman weary of online dating, but it turns out they also have a root in science. Researchers have shown that humans can use scent to sort out genetic combinations that could lead to weaker offspring.

At a dimly lit art gallery in Los Angeles on a recent night, partygoers huddled around several tables covered with plastic freezer bags stuffed with shirts and an index card bearing a number. Once they found one they liked, a photographer snapped a picture of them holding the bag and projected it on to a wall so the shirt’s rightful owner could step forward and meet his or her odour’s admirer.

Konstantin Bakhurin, a 25-year-old neuroscience graduate student, said he bypassed the bags that smelled like baby powder or laundry detergent or perfume in search of something more unique: the owner of a distinctive yellow T-shirt whose fragrance he described as “spicy”.

“I think it’s probably a bit more pseudoscience,” said Bakhurin, who attended with two fellow graduate students from University of California, Los Angeles. “I just kind of came here for kicks to see what would happen.”

The parties are a marked contrast to the proliferation of online dating sites, which demand countless details from singles. In some ways they are taking romance back to its most primal beginnings.

Judith Prays, a web developer who now lives in Atlanta, said she came up with the idea for pheromone parties after she failed to find a match online. She said she’d date men for a month or so before things soured, until she started seeing a man who wasn’t what she was looking for and wound up in a two-year relationship.

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