What it smells like
Spices whose heat is sharp and volatile rather than warm and heavy. Pink pepper sparkles and vanishes, ginger bites, cardamom is almost eucalyptic. These lift a composition without weighing it down.
Fresh Spice fades fast and stays high in the mix. Warm Spice settles into the base and lasts all day.
pepper - and in the same register, ginger, grains of paradise.
Notes that load on it
Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.
-
Ginger
Citrus
Dry Wood
Heart · ~8h
Botanical
2,296
-
Grains of Paradise
Warm Spice
Heart · ~6h
Botanical
4
-
Pink Pepper
Mineral
Fruity
Top · ~3h
Botanical
3,656
-
Poivrol
Aromatic
Dry Wood
Top · ~2h
Molecule
-
Peppery Notes
Top · ~2h
Abstract
-
Pepper
Heart · ~8h
Botanical
2,646
-
Cascarilla
Warm Spice
Dry Wood
Heart · ~8h
Botanical
4
-
Longoza
Cooling
Dry Wood
Green
Heart · ~8h
Botanical
6
-
Angelica Seed
Aromatic
Green
Top · ~2h
Botanical
-
Kava Kava
Earthy
Base · ~12h
Botanical
-
Beta-Caryophyllene
Dry Wood
Base · ~44h
Molecule
-
Nasturtium
Sulphurous
Green
Heart · ~4h
Botanical
14
-
Ginger Blossom
Floral
Heart · ~5h
Botanical
1
-
Cayenne Pepper
Warm Spice
Heart · ~5h
Botanical
-
Ginger Ale
Citrus
Aldehydic
Vanilla
Top · ~2h
Prepared
-
Cardamom
Cooling
Heart · ~8h
Botanical
3,319
-
Candied Ginger
Vanilla
Heart · ~6h
Prepared
7
-
Masala Chai
Warm Spice
Lactonic
Tobacco & Hay
Base · ~12h
Prepared
-
Moscow Mule
Citrus
Top · ~2h
Prepared
-
Pepper Leaf
Dry Wood
Base · ~10h
Botanical
Materials that carry it
Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.
| Material | CAS | Terms | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,2-dimethyl-3-phenylmethoxypropanal | CAS 38216-93-2 | cardamom, coriander, ginger | |
| 4-methyl-8-methylideneadamantan-2-ol | CAS 122760-84-3 | cardamom, ginger | |
| borneol | CAS 464-45-9 | peppery | |
| hinesol | CAS 23811-08-7 | peppery | |
| myrcene | CAS 123-35-3 | peppery | |
| sarisan | CAS 18607-93-7 | peppery | |
| piperine | CAS 94-62-2 | peppery | |
| rotundone | CAS 18374-76-0 | peppery | |
| zingerone | CAS 122-48-5 | ginger | |
| beta-pinene | CAS 127-91-3 | peppery | Declarable |
| alpha-guajene | CAS 3691-12-1 | peppery | |
| methyl eugenol | CAS 93-15-2 | peppery | IFRA |
| alpha-bisabolol | CAS 515-69-5 | peppery | IFRA |
| perillyl alcohol | CAS 536-59-4 | cardamom | |
| ethyl vinyl ketone | CAS 1629-58-9 | peppery | |
| terpinyl isobutyrate | CAS 7774-65-4 | peppery | |
| caryophyllene formate | CAS 58096-46-1 | peppery | |
| (-)-limonene | CAS 5989-54-8 | peppery | Declarable IFRA |
| cis-4-decenal | CAS 21662-09-9 | cardamom | |
| 2-tetradecenal | CAS 64461-99-0 | peppery | |
| dodec-3-en-1-al | CAS 68083-57-8 | coriander | |
| trans-2-decenal | CAS 3913-81-3 | coriander | |
| 4-carvomenthenol | CAS 562-74-3 | peppery | |
| 1-ethylhexyl tiglate | CAS 94133-92-3 | peppery | |
| 6-methylhept-5-en-2-ol | CAS 1569-60-4 | coriander | |
| (2e,4e)-deca-2,4-dienal | CAS 25152-84-5 | coriander | IFRA |
| 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol | CAS 7786-61-0 | peppery | |
| 2-methyl-5-(methylthio)furan | CAS 13678-59-6 | peppery | |
| 5-methyl-5-phenylhexan-3-one | CAS 4927-36-0 | peppery | |
| 2,6-dimethylocta-2,4,6-triene | CAS 673-84-7 | peppery |
Showing 30 of 43. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.
Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.
The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.
Anchor terms
A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.
- cardamom
- coriander
- ginger
- pepper
- peppery
- anise
- anise, licorice
- anisic
The rest of Spicy
The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.