Musk Ketone

Note Profile

Molecule

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About

A synthetic nitro musk. It smells sweet, warm and strongly powdery, with a soft animal warmth under it and a faint floral-fruity lift. It is very tenacious and was used as much for fixing a formula as for its own smell. EU regulation now classes it CMR Category 2 and it has largely been replaced by macrocyclic and polycyclic musks.

Scent Profile

Musk Ketone smells like a soft, clean musk with a strongly powdery character. A warm, sweet powdery tone sits alongside it. Underneath is a soft, subtle animal warmth, present but never dominant. A trace of amber, floral and fruity nuance shows faintly in the background, with the drydown reading cleaner and more powdery over time.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~48h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Floral

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

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can use this material directly to make Musk Ketone.

Musk ketone ambre · musky · soapy

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use this material, or something else.

Origin

Made synthetically. 4-tert-butyl-2,6-dimethyl-3,5-dinitroacetophenone, CAS 81-14-1. The American Chemical Society records that Albert Baur made it in 1888 by accident, while looking for a better route to TNT. COSMILE Europe describes the material as a yellowish solid, practically insoluble in water. It has no natural source at all.

Usage in Perfumery

Attested on 4 Parfumo note listings across 2 brands, and absent from the Fragrantica note vocabulary. The ACS calls it a fixative in perfumery, because it slows the loss of the more volatile parts of a formula and lengthens the whole. Its EU CMR Category 2 classification is why current usage is small.