Elemental

Mineral

Stone, metal and chalk: struck flint, wet slate, cold steel

mineral 127 notes 117 materials 2 anchors · thin

What it smells like

The cold, hard, inorganic register. It is the only facet whose referent is not a plant, an animal or a food. Carried on indispensability rather than frequency: for dihydromyrcenol, flint, clay, cork and driftwood, the mineral quality is the STATED separator from a neighbour.

Where it stops

Mineral is the substrate. Aquatic-Ozonic is the air above it. Earthy is soil, which is wet, organic and alive where mineral is dry and dead.

Smells most like

limestone - and in the same register, copper, chalk.

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.

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.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
rhodinol CAS 6812-78-8 metallic IFRA
rosyrane CAS 60335-71-9 metallic
safranal CAS 116-26-7 metallic IFRA
theaspirane CAS 36431-72-8 metallic
benzophenone CAS 119-61-9 metallic
butyloctenal CAS 13019-16-4 metallic
citronitrile CAS 5146-66-7 metallic IFRA
nerylacetone CAS 3879-26-3 metallic
vernaldehyde CAS 66327-54-6 metallic
neryl formate CAS 2142-94-1 metallic
allyl octanoate CAS 4230-97-1 metallic
diallyl sulfide CAS 592-88-1 metallic
dihydrofarnesol CAS 37519-97-4 metallic
dodecanenitrile CAS 2437-25-4 metallic
ethyl vanillate CAS 617-05-0 metallic
heptyl benzoate CAS 7155-12-6 metallic
propyl valerate CAS 141-06-0 metallic
synthetic amber CAS 68611-23-4 metallic
farnesyl acetate CAS 29548-30-9 metallic
diallyl disulfide CAS 2179-57-9 metallic
piperonyl acetate CAS 326-61-4 metallic
prenyl salicylate CAS 68555-58-8 metallic
diallyl trisulfide CAS 2050-87-5 metallic
dipropyl disulfide CAS 629-19-6 metallic
furfuryl octanoate CAS 39252-03-4 metallic
isoamyl salicylate CAS 87-20-7 metallic
citronellyl nitrile CAS 51566-62-2 metallic
delta-dodecalactone CAS 713-95-1 metallic
gamma-dodecalactone CAS 2305-05-7 metallic
cyclododecyl acetate CAS 6221-92-7 metallic

Showing 30 of 117. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

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.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • chalky
  • metallic
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere

None

Thinly anchored

This facet rests on 2 direct terms, which makes it one of the more likely to move when the crosswalk is revised or a better source is found. It is flagged here rather than presented as equal in weight to a facet held up by nine.

The rest of Elemental

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.

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