Root Beer

Note Profile

Prepared

Drag to turn On Note Island

About

Root beer is a prepared compound, not a botanical. The trade account of it is built on two pillars. Methyl salicylate gives the sharp, cooling, candy-like top that most people name first. Vanilla gives the sweet, creamy base that rounds it. Sassafras, sarsaparilla and liquorice supply the rooty middle the drink is named for.

Scent Profile

Root Beer opens with a sharp, cooling, candy-like top from methyl salicylate. A sweet, creamy vanilla base rounds it out underneath. Through the middle runs a rooty, earthy note from sassafras and sarsaparilla, bitter and slightly medicinal. A warm spice of cassia, clove and nutmeg sits alongside, and a dry, woody, faintly camphorous bark note runs under the root.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~6h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Fresh & Citrus, Woody & Earthy, Spicy

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

WorldSee it in Note Island

ScentArt

What is ScentArt?

Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Root Beer from materials such as:

Methyl salicylate aromatic · rooty · eucalyptus

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Methyl Salicylate, Anethole, Vanillin

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

Origin

Reconstructed, always. Perfumer & Flavorist lists the parts: safrole-free sassafras extract for the woody, rooty, slightly camphorous top, methyl salicylate as the dominant character-impact compound, anethole from star anise, vanilla in some form, sarsaparilla and liquorice root for the bitter earthy root, then cinnamon cassia, clove eugenol, nutmeg and ginger as supporting spice. True sassafras oil is not used, because safrole is regulated, so every modern version is a substitution rather than the historical material.

Usage in Perfumery

Attested once on Fragrantica, in the Beverages group, and absent from Parfumo. It is a gourmand accent, used the way cola and coca-cola are used, to put a recognisable soft drink in the heart of a composition.