Red Bean Paste
Note Profile
About
Red bean paste is anko: azuki beans boiled with sugar to a dense sweet mash, used as the filling in mochi, taiyaki and steamed buns. Both sources that describe it reach for the same three words, sweet, earthy and starchy. Neither claims any fruit, floral or spice character.
Scent Profile
Sweet_vanillic leads. Both sources put the sweetness first, The Scent Base as plain 'sweet' and DOOP as 'dense sweetness, rich', and the paste is sugar-cooked so this is the sugar itself rather than a vanilla added over it. Earthy is second and is claimed independently by both sources; it is the bean, the raw legume smell that survives cooking and is what keeps this from reading as caramel. Nutty carries the cooked-legume body, the closest facet available for 'starchy', which has no clean match among the 32. Below the naming line, powdery takes the other half of that starchiness, the dry mealy texture of a mashed bean. Lactonic sits with a wide spread: The Scent Base says the note is a foundation for lactonic accords, which is a claim about what it hosts, not about what it smells of, so it is scored low rather than read as evidence. Creamy_woody and tobacco_hay hold small dry-grain traces. No facet was zeroed to make a point; the facets left at zero are simply ones neither source mentioned.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Vigna angularis, the azuki bean, cooked and sweetened. There is no extract or essential oil of it. In perfumery the note is a built accord made from sweet, starchy and earthy materials, and it is used as a platform rather than as a lead. The Scent Base describes it as a foundation for vanilla, lactonic, fruity and savoury accords, and places it in a 'Molecules, Minerals and Curiosities' family. It has been used by the house d'Annam. No Givaudan, IFF, Firmenich or Symrise sheet for azuki was found.
Usage in Perfumery
A base note in East Asian gourmand compositions, where it carries the dense sweetness that mochi, dorayaki and bun accords are built on. It sits under vanilla, lactones, toasted sesame, rice and bakery notes rather than beside citrus or florals. Four Fragrantica perfumes carry it and no Parfumo placement was found.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Red Bean Paste
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Red Bean Paste appears prominently.
No perfumes featuring this note have been reviewed yet. Check back soon.