Lettuce

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Lettuce is a note built around near-absence. The two sources that describe it agree on the character and flatly disagree on whether the material exists. Both describe the same thing: watery, pale green, cool, mineral, with a faint milky edge from the sap and a slight bitterness on tearing a leaf. One calls it 'the particular crunch of leaves with nothing to say' and 'a deliberate whisper in a world of shouts'.

Scent Profile

Lettuce is a quiet note built around almost nothing, pale green and watery rather than sweet or floral. It reads like the inside of a torn leaf, with a faint bitterness where it tears. A cool, mineral water quality runs through it, close to the wet inside of a fresh iceberg head. It stays modest throughout, a whisper rather than a statement.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~3h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Fresh & Citrus, Elemental

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

Origin

Lactuca sativa, the garden lettuce. The sources contradict each other on sourcing and the contradiction is unresolved. A perfumery glossary states plainly that lettuce is 'not extracted for perfumery' and is a fantasy accord built from transparent green materials (cis-3-hexenol at very low levels), watery-mineral elements and clean musks, with molecular formula and CAS recorded as N/A. A second glossary states the opposite: that lettuce absolute is solvent-extracted from seeds and leaves with hexane and ethanol, and is produced in Egypt and Greece. No primary supplier catalogue checked lists a lettuce or Lactuca sativa absolute for sale, which fits the fantasy-accord account better, though absence from those catalogues does not disprove a small production run. The milky character both descriptions mention is real botany either way: lactucarium is the latex sap the genus is named for.

Usage in Perfumery

6 Fragrantica placements and 2 Parfumo across 1 brand. Parfumo's own note page counts 16 perfumes carrying the term, first in 1989 and most recently in 2024, and says it tends to run through the whole composition rather than sitting in one phase. It is an accent, not a headline: it supports other green materials such as galbanum, grass and cucumber, and works next to basil, mint and clary sage. Its use is deliberate quietness, in minimalist and watery-green compositions.