Cayenne Pepper

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Dried red chilli, ground. A dry pungent spice with a dusty, hay-like body under the heat, closer to a spice drawer than to a fresh vegetable. It is the powder and the oleoresin pressed from it, not the living fruit on the plant.

Scent Profile

Fresh_spice leads because every source that describes the material at all describes pungency first: 'pungent odor' from a supplier sheet, 'chilis' and 'spicy' from the ChemicalBook entry, 'rather like paprika and black pepper' from smellers on Basenotes. It is scored below the published pepper note's 0.75 on purpose, because pepper's piquancy is an odour and a good part of cayenne's is a burn, and a burn is not a facet. Warm_spice is the dried, red, sun-cooked half of that spice register, the part that separates a ground powder from a fresh pod. Earthy is 'musty', named directly. Tobacco_hay is 'hay tobacco', also named directly, and it is the facet that makes ground cayenne smell dusty rather than sharp. Below the naming line, fruity and sweet_vanillic carry the 'sweet' descriptor and the dried-fruit character the pod keeps, smoky is inferred only from the Basenotes comparison to paprika and is the weakest claim in this vector, green and aromatic_herbal are the 'herbal' descriptor and the vegetal trace any Capsicum keeps, and dry_woody and mineral are traces borrowed from the dry-spice shape rather than stated by anyone.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Spicy

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Cayenne is a cultivar group of Capsicum annuum, dried and milled. The perfumery material behind the note is capsicum oleoresin, CAS 8023-77-6, a solvent extract sold mainly to the flavour and pharmaceutical trades. Suppliers describe it as a reddish-brown to dark-red viscous liquid with a pungent odour and 'an extremely strong bite'. Most of that bite is capsaicin, which is not volatile and is felt by the trigeminal nerve rather than smelled, so the odour a perfumer works with is the smaller aromatic fraction around it. Parfumo records the note on 5 perfumes from 4 brands and files it under Chili, its own spicy-notes category, separate from Pepper.

Usage in Perfumery

It is a heat accent used in small amounts, mostly to make a woody, leather or amber base feel scorched. Perfumers reach for it the way a cook reaches for the jar: a pinch changes the whole dish and a spoonful ruins it. Expect it near tobacco, leather, cacao and dry woods rather than near florals.