The Chemistry of Fragrances

From Perfumer to Consumer

Charles S Sell, Charles S Sell

• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781782625476
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Organic Chemistry

Ever wondered how perfumes are developed? Or why different scents appeal to different people? The Chemistry of Fragrances 2nd Edition offers answers to these questions, providing a fascinating insight into the perfume industry, from the conception of an idea to the finished product. It discusses the technical, artistic and commercial challenges of the perfume industry in an informative and engaging style, with contributions from leading experts in the field. The book begins with a historical introduction and covers all aspects of the development process - from customer brief to producing a fragrance including; * Ingredients acquisition * Ingredient design and manufacture * Design and analysis of fragrance * Sensory aspects including odour perception * Psychological impact of fragrance * Technical challenges * Safety An updated section on the measurement of fragrance discusses the role of senses in marketing consumer products. This book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the perfumery business and includes an extensive bibliography to enable those interested to explore the field further. It also comes complete with a selection of colour illustrations and a fragranced page.

CHAPTER 1

The Human Relationship with Fragrance

LINDA HARMAN

Quest International

‘Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived’.

Helen Keller

Fragrance – the very word represents indulgence; pleasure; luxury. For centuries we have had a very special relationship with scent, with smell the most elusive of the senses. Helen Keller had an acute sensitivity to smell and touch, deprived as she was of sight and sound. The psychologist Sigmund Freud said that when mankind got together to cultivate the land, build ziggurats and temples, one of the casualties of civilisation was a diminution of the sense of smell. Certainly most of the greatest recent inventions have been linked to the more dominant informative senses of vision or hearing: television, telephone, computers, iPod … but when we want to retreat it is to the more emotional senses of smell, touch or taste that we turn.

Why is fragrance so evocative? Simply because of the way we are structured. Smell is the one sense whose exact mechanism remains a mystery – but which we do know is plugged directly into the part of the brain that is responsible for memory and emotion.

Barillé wrote: ‘The magic of fragrance comes from the relationship between man and nature’.

Despite civilisation, the magic remains today. Fragrance is a sensory pleasure and a vital part of brand communication. Odour surrounds us from the first waft of coffee or burst of citrus in the shower to those indulgent mood-setting candles or soothing bath oils in the evening, whispering messages through associations stored deep in the human subconscious. Whether it be seeking relaxation through the fabled qualities of lavender or camomile, being revived by the bracingly medicinal scent of rosemary, soothed by the luxury of rose, Ylang Ylang, or seduced by the sensuality of sandalwood, scent is an emotional catalyst. In our increasingly pressured society smell is the emotional sense, fragrance the key to managing the, often turbulent, human psyche.

Fragrance is both an art and a science. Bringing the fragrant messages to products today is complex and relies on the craft of both perfumer and chemist. The industry behind fragrance is global and worth 152 Billion USD every year. It is dominated by six international companies who account for 57% of the total market: Givaudan (Swiss), IFF (American), Firmenich (Swiss), Symrise (German), Quest International (Anglo-Dutch), and Takasago (Japanese). The fragrances and flavours created by these companies are incorporated by manufacturers into every aspect of our daily lives, providing a plethora of choice: creamy shampoos and conditioners with soft sensual smell or astringent ones with herbal extract to reassure functional benefits, laundry products with built-in freshness designed to cling to clothes, cleaning products that sparkle olfactively as well as functionally and a whole array of personal fragrance products to convey invitations or stay-away messages to others.

Luxury, prestige, indulgence, warmth, reassurance, freshness, clean; fragrance stands for them all. Its role in modern life has however come under question by some elements of society who feel scent is not a necessity. The reader can draw his own conclusion as the psychology and science of scent is explored, the detail of the industry described, the role of natural versus synthetic ingredients investigated, all in the context of the creation of an imaginary scent – Eve. The creation of Eve mimics the process followed by the fragrance industry today, from receipt of the initial brief to the creation, evaluation, toxicology testing and application into product that takes place. Sound science and striking work by chemists is fundamental to the creation of all modern products. Fragrance is no exception.

This book sets out to explore the roots of this fascinating industry from alchemy to modern artisan. The chemistry behind fragrance as well as the work of the many professionals involved in bringing the sensory art of fragrance into our modern lives is described. From plant through lab. to production, the detailed process is followed and explained by industry experts working for leading fragrance supplier Quest International, a member of the ICI Group of companies.

CHAPTER 2

The History of Aroma Chemistry and Perfume

DAVID H. PYBUS

Pandora Ltd.

In chemistry also, we are now conscious of the continuity of man’s intellectual effort; no longer does the current generation view the work of its forerunners with a disdainful lack of appreciation; and far from claiming infallibility, each successive age recognises the duty of developing its heritage from the past.

August Kekulé von Stradonitz (1821–1896)

The discovery, exploitation and use of fragrant materials began with an elite few, the priesthood, and had religious connotations. The very word perfume is derived from the Latin ‘per fumum’, meaning ‘by’ or ‘through’ smoke, as it was with the use of burning incense that the prayers of the ancients were transported to the heavens for the contemplation of Gods. From thence came the priest-kings, and a wider audience, though still restricted, of pharaohs, emperors, conquerors and monarchs with their attendant courtesans and alchemists, and use of perfume took on a hedonistic mantle as well as a spiritual one. In the twentieth century, a combination of Chemistry and the Industrial Revolution brought the revelation of fragrances to the rest of mankind and acted as catalysts for the furtherance of their usage.

The great world religions of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism and Zoroastrianism employ fragrance in pursuance of their faiths. Finally, there is some evidence that human pheromones exist and that they are detected, perhaps subliminally, using the sense of smell. Thus it is that religious and pleasurable pursuits have been the main drives in the phenomenal growth of perfume usage throughout the centuries. After man’s prehistoric past, with the dawning of civilisation, the use of fragrances developed within the four great centres of culture in China, India, Egypt and Mesopotamia, extending in time to sophisticated societies in Greece, Palestine, Rome, Persia and Arabia.

The seven ages of ‘aromatic’ man in Western Culture began when Crusaders brought back three magical gifts from the East to the Dark Ages of Europe, which had ‘not bathed for a thousand years’. Delicate aromatics, distilled alcohol and refined glass were the physical manifestation of thousands of years of alchemical research. The three together, a beautiful smell, a solvent to extend it and a bottle to conserve this ‘gift from the Gods’ were gladly accepted in the medieval West, and their use blossomed through the seven ages of Chivalry, Alchemy, Discovery, Revolution, Empire, Fashion and into the New Millennium.

2.1 EARLY USE OF FRAGRANCE

In prehistoric times, the hunter-gatherer tribes of man, in their explorations of nature, found many wonderful substances of great use in everyday living. Our ancestors from earliest times lived in makeshift tree and ground nests, much as chimpanzees do today, and it may be that our abiding appreciation of greenery stems from this long homestead association with it. Animal products in great variety, by-products of the hunt, were employed for clothing, shelter and tools as well as for food. Some pleasant aromas were also perceived, not least the smell of cooked meat! Similarly, the collection of herbs, spices and grasses unearthed familiar and fragrant compounds that were put to good use by the clans. An elite few were given especial reverence to hold in trust the lore of the tribe. These sorcerers, or medicine men, knew the power of use and misuse of nature’s pharmacopoeia, and over the centuries, by word of mouth, their store of wisdom increased. Craftsmen and artisans developed new and varied uses for materials as man’s drive to extend and expand his knowledge knew no bounds.

Eventually, a drift and concentration of tribes founded the great civilisations of the Nile in Egypt, Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq, the Hwang-Ho valley in China and the Indus civilisation of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa – all of which came into their own between 4000 and 2000 BC.

With them, over the centuries, came knowledge of glass, alcohol and aroma chemicals. Glass is made by fusing silica together that forms some 60% of the earth’s surface, with sodium carbonate and calcium carbonate, or limestone, as evident from...