Lotus Seed

Note Profile

Botanical

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About

The soft starchy sweetness of cooked lotus seed, the paste inside a mooncake. Powdery and mild, with a faint caramel edge. Nothing aquatic and nothing floral.

Scent Profile

Lotus Seed smells soft and starchy, like the sweet paste inside a mooncake. It is powdery and mild, with a faint caramel edge rather than raw sugar. A silky, lactonic smoothness runs through it, and underneath sits the faint, nutty character of the cooked seed itself.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Floral, Sweet & Gourmand

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

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ScentArt

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Origin

Lotus seed is the nut of Nelumbo nucifera, the same plant as the lotus flower, but a different organ and a different smell. There is no extract of it for perfumery. The seed is harvested, the bitter germ is pushed out with a hollow needle, and the rest is dried or boiled and sweetened into the paste that fills a mooncake. Parfumo records 5 perfumes with this note, first in 2018 and last in 2026. The one that is documented, d'Annam's Mooncake, builds it into golden syrup, salted egg yolk, mung bean, honey and vanilla.

Usage in Perfumery

Used in Asian dessert gourmands as a soft filler rather than a lead. It supplies starch and powder under sweeter, louder materials. In d'Annam's Mooncake a wearer describes the lotus seed and the mung bean together as 'a soft, slightly powdery touch' under honey and salted egg yolk. It is not interchangeable with the lotus flower note, which is aquatic and belongs in fresh florals.