Spinach

Note Profile

Botanical 1 perfume

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About

Spinach is the raw leaf of Spinacia oleracea. As a note it is a dark, damp green with a faint metallic edge.

Scent Profile

Spinach smells dark and green, damp and leafy, with a chlorophyll-rich intensity. A faint metallic edge runs through it and sets it apart from plainer leaf greens like lettuce. Under the green there is a trace of earth and a faint sulphurous, vegetable side. Suppliers of the absolute also report soft fruity and nutty tones.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic, Elemental

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can make Spinach from this natural extract.

Natural extract Spinach absolute

Smell words come from published sources.

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

Origin

Spinach is a leaf vegetable grown worldwide. The note is the raw leaf, not the cooked one. A spinach leaf absolute (CAS 68917-48-6) is made by solvent extraction and sold for flavour and fragrance use. It is a dark green semi-solid. The effect can also be built from leaf-green synthetics such as cis-3-hexenal and cis-3-hexenol. The raw leaf smells green from (Z)-3-hexenal, the cut-leaf aldehyde. Small amounts of sulphur compounds, earthy methoxypyrazines and a geranium-metallic ketone sit under it. Cooking makes the sulphur compounds dominant, and the smell turns cabbage-like.

Usage in Perfumery

Spinach appears in 3 perfumes on one large perfume database and 2 on another. One puts it in the heart with fig leaf and mate. Another uses spinach absolute with cucumber and jasmine tea. Perfumers use it for a darker, damper green than a standard leaf-green chemical. It gives a vegetal accord an edible-leaf reading rather than a stem or sap one.