Custard

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Custard is a gourmand accord built on the smell of dairy thickened with egg yolk and flavoured with sugar and vanilla. It is round, milky and sweet with a soft balsamic warmth, and it carries no burnt or caramelised edge at all. In perfumery it is the plain body that crème brûlée, trifle and pâtisserie accords are built on top of.

Scent Profile

Sweet vanilla over a thick lactonic dairy creaminess, with a soft balsamic warmth underneath. Beneath the sugar sits a plain milk-fat and egg-yolk richness, fatty without being sweet. A trace of egg-yolk sulphur sits under that, sulphurous only in the sense that yolk chemistry is what makes cooked custard smell fuller than sweetened milk. There is a light peach-cream fruitiness from the lactones, and no smoke, no caramel and no spice.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~10h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Waxy & Fatty

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

Origin

A prepared food, not an extract. Culinary custard is sweetened milk or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it, held below 80 °C because it curdles above that. Perfumery rebuilds it as a synthetic base: vanillin and ethyl vanillin for the sweetness, maltol or ethyl maltol to round it, and lactones such as gamma-nonalactone for the dairy volume.

Usage in Perfumery

Perfumers use custard in the heart and base of gourmand compositions to add creamy weight and a comforting, edible warmth without adding a burnt note. It softens sharp florals and gives density behind caramel, tonka and nutty accords. It is also the neutral dessert body a perfumer starts from before deciding whether to torch it, spice it or fruit it.