Fragrance 101: Ingredients Used In Making Fragrances (Part 2)

Continuing with our Fragrance 101 series, fragrance is made up of different ingredients much like a lotion or a shampoo.  These ingredients are categorized according to sources and these are naturals – from plants and animals, and aroma chemicals.

Animal sourced ingredients are ingredients that come from specialized glands of animals. You had to kill animals just to get those ingredients and make into perfume. Samples of ingredients sourced from animals are musks (from an abdominal gland of a male deer), civet (from civet cats), castoreum (from beavers) and amber gris (from whales).

Today, due to ethical and pricing reasons, animal products are a rarity in modern perfumery as they have been replaced by synthetic versions. But their history, usage and contribution to the industry have been very valuable. Originally they were used as fixatives in fragrances, bringing warmth, depth and complexity to a fragrance.

Plants, the most common source of fragrance ingredients, are extracted for their natural aroma oils. Flowers, fruits and even barks and roots are just some of the plants that we use to get our aroma oils from. So, imagine the palette of ingredients we can already use for fragrance designs.  Not to mention, that for any alteration in the extraction process – temperature, solvent, time to name a few – you get different essential oils. 

For example, 4 different extraction of bitter orange blossom yields 4 different types of essential oils – orange flower concrete, orange flower water, neroli oils and orange blossom absolute.

The aroma chemicals or synthetic chemicals are molecules that were created in the laboratory for fragrance purposes. This is the most commonly used ingredient as they are relatively more economical, sustainable, and quality assured as compared to plant extraction. Due to advances in technologies, aroma chemicals not only represent the synthetic counterpart of natural-sourced fragrances but also advances in molecules allowing more complex and consumer-preferred fragrances.

Benzaldehyde was the first aroma molecule created in the mid 19^th century. This was naturally present in bitter almond oils. Then coumarin (tonka bean) came in 1868 and vanillin appeared in 1874 among others.

As highlighted in the previous post, fragrance ingredients MUST evaporate in order for you to smell it. Without the molecules converted into gas, then the olfactive bulb (epithelium) in your nose will not be able to smell anything, as highlighted in this post. Different ingredients have different evaporation rates. Perfumers know all these in order to create a perfectly performing fragrance.

What's Next in Fragrance 101...
In the next Fragrance 101 post, the fragrance pyramid will be introduced.


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Fragrance 101: What Is A Fragrance (Part 1)

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Fragrance 101 is a series of posts that will introduce the readers and fragrance fans into the magical world of fragrances. The author will impart his knowledge on what a fragrance is, how to understand fragrance descriptions and the different fragrance families used in describing the fragrances in this blog.