One would think that flowers would have been one of the first ingredients that would be used to make perfume but in fact, flowers weren’t used for that purpose until the 9th century. Before that, perfumers as far back as four thousand years ago used herbs, spices, resins and bark. Extracting the oils from flowers by distillation was first introduced by a Persian chemist named Avicenna and his procedure is still in wide use today. Until Avicenna’s discovery, it was a laborious process to use flowers in perfume, requiring hours of effort to pulverize the petals finely enough to extract some of the oils. Years later, the Hungarians would be the first to make modern perfume from flower oils blended in a solution of alcohol.

Most flowers are fragrant but some are exceptional enough to be used in perfumes. The best known and one of the most popular throughout perfume history is the rose, generally known as the queen of flowers. Perfumes made of roses were favorites in Greece and Rome. By gathering the flowers at night they would be at their best since they begin losing their scent after sunrise. Cristalle by Chanel uses roses as the chief ingredient along with aldehydes to enhance the bouquet, amber and patchouli.

CRISTALLE BY CHANEL(WOMEN)

Price : $103.19

Jasmine is another flower used in perfumes, also harvested just before dawn. Processed immediately before their fragrance fades, special care must be taken to keep the fragile petals from bruising and affecting the balance of the bouquet. Special baskets for just this purpose are kept for transporting them. Jasmine is used with vanilla and bergamot by Guerlain in the manufacture of Shalimar Light perfume, a refreshing feminine fragrance that is airy, pleasant and light.

SHALIMAR BY GUERLAIN (PURE PERFUME SPRAY REFILLABLE 1/4 OZ)

Price : $88.85

Violets are also favorites but produce so little essential oil that they’re rarely used these days. Instead a synthetic replacement is used, usually combined with oils that resemble that of the violet.

Flower of fruit are also used in many perfumes. Those who know the heavenly scent of orange and lemon blossoms will understand why they are a popular ingredient in many floral perfumes. Jasmine, mimosa and lily blossoms as well as lily of the valley are also quite common in perfumes. Unopened flower buds of clove add spice to perfume concoctions and a member or the orchid family, vanilla, also is a favorite ingredient.

A few terms may come in handy for understanding floral perfume descriptions. When you hear a perfume referred to as a “single floral” it means that the fragrance is dominated by one particular flower such as rose or lily. “Floral Bouquet” means it contains the scent of several flowers and “bright floral” is a combination of the two.

Tim Walt

Rarely does perfume come to mind when one thinks about leaves, but plant leaves have played an important role in perfumery since people began to enjoy wearing scents. While the flowers of most plants used in perfumes are essential so, too, are the leaves of those plants. Leaves normally hold more oil than flowers since they are the life-support of the blossoms. While petals and other parts of the flower are used for their aroma, leaves provide many of the oils used to mix perfumes to the correct scent and consistency.

In the middle ages, leaves were a very important source for the perfumers of the royal courts, for the flowers were often allowed to be harvested only at the pleasure of the ruling monarch. The flowers would grace the tables and halls of nobility until they wilted, rendering them useless for scents, while the leaves still retained much of the essential oils that perfumers needed to make their creations.

Leaves have continued to be used in perfumes, particularly the leaves of herbal plants. Basil leaves are not just for cooking, but is included in many perfumes including Dune by Christian Dior. Dune combines the leaves of basil, mandarin and sage with moss and cedarwood for a truly unique and delicious scent that definitely doesn’t smell like a kitchen!

DUNE BY CHRISTIAN DIOR(WOMEN)

Price : $58.43

The leaves of herbal plants are very aromatic due to the oil that the plant manufactures. They are very easy to cultivate and quite inexpensive, making them a favorite ingredient of many perfumers. Oil from the leaves is usually recovered by crushing or grinding, strained for impurities and decanted for later use. The process is very simple and had been done by hand for hundreds of years before the age of machines.

Many people are surprised when they learn how many varieties of leaves are used in the scents that they love. Coriander, for instance, isn’t just a prominent ingredient in your favorite salsa but when Moschino perfumers mix it with rose, gardenia, carnation and vanilla it becomes the popular perfume Moschino. If you think you aren’t familiar with coriander, that’s because it’s more commonly called cilantro.

MOSCHINO BY MOSCHINO (EAU DE TOILETTE SPRAY 1.5 OZ)

Price : $30.23

Wormwood has also been used, particularly in France where the plant thrives. Its aromatic leaves have been used as a base for many years, imparting a fresh herbal scent and pleasing consistency to both liquid and solid perfumes. In the Middle East, jasmine and myrtle leaves as well as cinnamon leaves were and still are used in perfumes. Other leaves used in prominent perfumes on the market today include lavender, rosemary, sage, caraway and thyme.

Tim Walt

The aromatic industry makes use of several techniques in the extraction of essential oils from natural sources. Distillation, Expression, maceration, Enfleurage, etc are a few effective techniques among them. The method of extraction depends largely on the type of raw material used. Enfleurage is one such method which is employed effectively in the extraction of fragrances. Here, the fragrant compounds that are emitted from the raw materials are absorbed into wax and then extracted as oil with the help of alcohol.

In this method, odorless fats which remain solid at room temperature are made use of to capture the fragrant compounds which are given off by plants. The process of Enfleurage can either be ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ according to the raw material from which the oil has to be extracted.
The process involved in extraction of aromatic compounds through cold Enfleurage is as follows. A layer of animal fat usually from pork or beef is smeared on a large framed, glass plate which is known as chassis. After it sets completely, the raw material which normally comprises of petals or whole flowers are placed on it for a period of one to three days for their scent to get diffused on to the fat. This process is repeated by replacing the withered flowers until the fragrance absorbed by the fat reaches a saturation point. This method of fragrance extraction was initially developed in the South of France towards the nineteenth century and was mainly used for the creation of high-grade concentrates.

Hot Enfleurage is a process in which the fats which are in a solid state of form are heated initially and the raw materials which consist of different plant material are stirred into it at repeated intervals until the fat becomes saturated with the scent. Considered to be one among the ancient methods of preserving fragrances from plant matter, it was used widely and was a very popular method.

Both the hot and cold Enfleurage produces the ‘enfleurage pomade’, or fat which happens to be heavily saturated with fragrance.  It could be sold directly or treated further by ethyl alcohol so that the aromatic molecules are absorbed by the alcohol. This alcohol, when evaporated, leaves behind the odorant or fragrant compounds.

The technique of Enfleurage is not considered to be very economically viable by the aromatic industry these days and as a result it has given way to more cost effective and efficient extraction methods.

Tim Walt