Mill Hill Essays | MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London

Interesting article exploring how research into the way the sense of smell works has applications for wider human health.  Included is a well-written explanation of the prevailing theory of how smells are perceived.

Mill Hill Essays | MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London

What Space Smells Like

An interesting article featuring the work of Steve Pearce, a British perfumer, who also happened to give one of the best presentations at this year’s BSP symposium, to recreate the distinctive smell of space for NASA to use in astronaut training.

What Space Smells Like - The Atlantic

Here you can also read an interview with Steve Pearce on the subject published on Discovery.

Bitter Almond Oil

Bitter Almond Oil is one of those curious perfumery ingredients that isn’t at all what it appears to be: it almost certainly won’t have been made from almonds, bitter or otherwise, isn't bitter and may be natural or synthetic.

Bitter Almond Blossom

What is called Bitter Almond Oil and was originally and is still occasionally made from bitter almond kernels - Prunus amygdalus Amara - is now more usually made from apricot, plum, cherry or peach kernels (or by synthesis from various pre-cursors, most commonly toluene). It consists of about 99% Benzaldehyde whether made from a natural or a synthetic source, and may be sold as Bitter Almond Oil in either case.

When almonds are used it is the press-cake remaining after extraction of the fixed almond oil that is the starting point which is macerated in warm water prior to extraction. A substance called Amygdalin, present in all the kernels mentioned, is converted by enzymatic action into benzaldehyde and hydrocyanic acid (what is commonly called cyanide when people are talking about the poison, once also called Prussic Acid). There is enough cyanide present in about 10 drops of the crude oil to kill an average person, and it is poisonous by ingestion and by inhalation, so the oil is quite useless at this point as a flavour or perfume agent. The process is nearly identical when it is made from the kernels (stones) of apricots, plums, cherries or peaches.  


As an aside, amygdalin is also present in apple pips, so far as I know they have never been used as a commercial source of the oil, but if you’ve ever heard that apple pips are poisonous, now you know why.  In practice they don’t contain cyanide unless they are crushed up and fermented and tend to pass through the human gut whole, so if you’re in the habit of eating your apples core-and-all you’re not likely to come to any harm.

The crude oil is cleaned by alkali washing and rectification resulting in the nearly pure benzaldehyde that is sold widely as Bitter Almond Oil. Oddly enough it’s main use in flavouring is as a sweetener - so not only is in not usually made from almonds but it isn’t bitter either! The odour is familiar to most people as marzipan, which was traditionally made with about 1% bitter almond kernels ground up with the sweet almonds into a paste. Now it is more likely to be made with all sweet almonds and some benzaldehyde added to flavour it.

According to Arctander, Hydrocyanic acid smells rather similar to Benzaldehyde - though I don’t recommend testing that assertion.

Arctander also has this to say about the natural vs synthetic origins of the oil:

Bitter Almond Oil is very rarely produced from bitter almonds. If the oil is a natural distillate at all, it is most often produced from other kernels (see above). A large part of all the so-called bitter almond oil in the market is actually a refined synthetic benzaldehyde, supposedly free from chlorine. The labelling FFPA stands for “free from prussic acid” (old name for hydrocyanic acid). The abbreviation FFC means “free from chlorine”, and is obviously applied to synthetic products.

He goes on to say that some of the imitations of the natural distillate contain traces of (deliberately added) hydrocyanic acid and if completely free of chlorine, are thus identical with the natural product. I’ve no idea whether this kind of adulteration continues today, but it seems likely.

Benzaldehyde by the way isn’t very stable and tends to turn into Benzoic acid (white crystals that are essentially odourless) on exposure to air and consequently it is often sold with some ethanol added to improve stability.

Benzaldehyde is highly volatile liquid: a top note if you use it in perfumery and isn’t all that widely used. I happen to have some at the moment because one of the things I’m researching is a lilac fragrance, in which it is a component.


A draft of this material appeared on the fragrance discussion forum Basenotes in this post.

A Jubilee Pageant, 1953 and the Coronation

On July 12th 2012 Her Majesty the Queen will be attending a Pageant in Shropshire in honour of her 60 years as Queen.  Pell Wall Perfumes will be there too and it seemed the perfect occasion to release a fragrance I've had in development for a while.

1953 - a limited edition fragrance by Pell Wall Perfumes

I'm calling it '1953' - after the year of the coronation - that's because among many special things involved in the ascension to the throne of a British monarch perhaps the most special is the anointing - according to Wikipedia British Monarchs are the only ones still anointed as part of the ceremony and it is done with a specially made Coronation Oil - the ingredients for which have been similar since the 12th Century and include ambergris, civet, rose, jasmine, orange flower, cinnamon, musk and benzoin.

1953 by Pell Wall Perfumes includes all those fine ingredients (though for ethical reasons I'm using synthetic substitutes for civet and musk) in the very best qualities to be found.   I've then adapted them into a very long-lasting, easy to wear and highly concentrated Parfum for the 21st Century, presented in a diamond-clear heart-shaped flask, complete with it's own crystal stand.

Newly filled bottles awaiting boxing

Just twelve of these magnificent gifts will be made for sale on the day of release, with further small releases planned including Christmas 2012, the anniversary of the coronation itself on 2nd June 2013 and finally for Christmas 2013 - after that 1953 will be available only to special order.

Storing Perfumes

A question that often seems to come up is What’s the best way to store my fragrances? So I thought I’d give some advice and the logic behind it here.

Open shelves might not be the best choice to store your fragrances

Heat and light are the enemies of fragrance longevity, but a bit of temporary warmth is unlikely to do any great harm.  Leaving the bottle on a sunny windowsill will almost certainly result in changes though.

Fordhall Farm Summer Fair

Pell Wall Perfumes will be at Fordhall Farm for their Summer Fair on Sunday 24th June. We’ll have some special deals for visitors to our stand and the whole day promises to be a great family day out too.

There will be tractor and donkey rides, sack racing, face painting, wildlife activities, pizza making, clay sculpting, hawks on walks and Simon Airy displaying an array of reptiles and amphibians.

Picture from last year’s summer fair at Fordhall Farm

Fordhall Farm itself is something rather special - it’s England’s first Community Land Initiative, one of the longest running organic farms in the country and incorporates a scheduled Ancient Monument on the premises.  The Wikipedia article gives some information about it’s history.

Books about Perfumes and Perfumery

There are quite a lot of books about on the subject of perfumes, perfumery and the making of perfumes and many of them are not all that helpful, so I’ve tried to gather together here some recommendations for books I’ve found to be particularly helpful or interesting.

Some books from the Pell Wall Perfumes bookshelf

First of all if you have not read  Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: the story of a murder you really should: besides offering a wonderful insight into the early days of perfume making it’s a fantastic (in both senses of the word) story of murder and obsession that keeps you turning the pages long after you should have gone to sleep.

While we’re on the early days of perfume, The Art of Perfumery by G.W. Septimus Piesse, first published in 1857 is well worth reading if you are interested in how perfumes were made in the 19th century: the book covers production methods and gives formulae as well as anecdotes and trenchant opinions that together make for a fun read: elements of it are still useful to the modern perfumer too.

One hundred years on and we get Steffen Arctander writing Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin - his work is unmatched and still qualifies as the standard work on the odour of raw materials throughout the industry.  I also have his Perfume and Flavor Chemicals Volumes 1&2 in CD form and although the range of synthetics in use has increased enormously since this was published in the 1960s it still provides a very useful insight into the majority of synthetic ingredients in use in modern perfumery.

Of similar vintage, but very different form is W. A. Poucher’s Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps, with special reference to Synthetics Volumes 1&2.  I have the 6th Edition from 1959, which is excellent but I’m told by people who have more recent editions that they are not nearly as good.  My copies are stuffed full of fascinating information, formulae for accords, descriptions of materials and scent notes and much more besides.  Excellent stuff.

If you are planning on learning to make fragrances of your own then a great starting place is Tony Curtis and David G Williams’ An Introduction to Perfumery which gives you much the same range of information as Poucher, but slightly better structured and vastly more up to date.  In addition you get a well structured learning plan and a series of exercises to build your skills.

For an overview of the reality of fragrance creation and the way fragrance companies work, as well as a dip into the cultural history of fragrances and a wealth of information more obviously associated with the title I can recommend The Chemistry of Fragrances: from Perfumer to Consumer, edited by Charles S Sell.  This volume includes essays by a number of other authors so you get a few different perspectives, but Charles’s own work is a real highlight as he’s such a readable author even if, like me, you don’t have a degree in organic chemistry.

If you are looking for something to help you understand how one fragrance is related to another then you could do worse than to invest in Michael Edwards' Fragrances of the World 2012 which catalogues all the great fragrances of the world according to type.

I could doubtless go on, but for the moment at least I’m going to stop there and publish this post.  Please feel free to add your own comment on these books or to make other recommendations of your own.