Sweet & Gourmand

Vanilla

Vanilla, caramel, sugar and their synthetic relatives

sweet_vanillic 324 notes 1,103 materials 5 anchors

What it smells like

The gravitational centre of the sweet family. Vanillin, ethyl vanillin, caramel furanones and the coumarin edge of tonka: warm, soft, edible and extremely stable. That stability is why sweetness is the cheapest way to make a fragrance last.

Where it stops

Vanilla is sweet and soft. Amber is sweet and resinous. Amber carries a dryness and a hint of smoke that vanilla does not.

Smells most like

sugar - and in the same register, vanilla, maltol.

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
zinc1850690 CAS 13494-06-9 caramellic, maple, sugar, sweet
3-methylcyclopentane-1,2-dione CAS 765-70-8 caramellic, maple, sugar, sweet
3,5-dimethyl-1,2-cyclopentanedione CAS 13494-07-0 caramellic, maple, sugar, sweet
Abhexone CAS 698-10-2 caramellic, maple, sweet
levulinic acid CAS 123-76-2 caramellic, sweet, vanilla
vanillyl alcohol CAS 498-00-0 caramellic, sweet, vanilla
geranyl crotonate CAS 56172-46-4 caramellic, maple, sweet
maltol isobutyrate CAS 65416-14-0 caramellic, sugar, sweet
vanillin isobutyrate CAS 20665-85-4 caramellic, sweet, vanilla
5-methylfurfural CAS 620-02-0 caramellic, maple, sweet
1,2-cyclohexanedione CAS 765-87-7 caramellic, maple, sweet
4,6-dimethyl-2h-pyran-2-one CAS 675-09-2 caramellic, sugar, sweet
3-ethylcyclopentane-1,2-dione CAS 13494-08-1 caramellic, maple, sweet
4-hydroxy-5-methylfuran-3-one CAS 19322-27-1 caramellic, sugar, sweet
3-ethyl-2-hydroxycyclopent-2-en-1-one CAS 21835-01-8 caramellic, maple, sweet
4-hydroxy-2,3-dimethyl-2H-furan-5-one CAS 28664-35-9 caramellic, maple, sweet
5-ethyl-4-hydroxy-2-methylfuran-3-one CAS 27538-09-6 caramellic, maple, sweet IFRA
2-hydroxy-3,4,5-trimethylcyclopent-2-en-1-one CAS 109682-87-3 caramellic, maple, sweet
3-ethyl-2-hydroxy-4-methylcyclopent-2-en-1-one CAS 42348-12-9 caramellic, maple, sweet
3-ethoxy-4-hydroxybenzaldehyde;2-methylpropanoate CAS 188417-26-7 caramellic, sweet, vanilla
(2E)-1-(1-ethoxyethoxy)-3,7-dimethylocta-2,6-diene CAS 38019-89-5 caramellic, sweet, vanilla
cis-2-cyclopenten-1-one, 2-hydroxy-3,4,5-trimethyl CAS 125476-24-6 caramellic, maple, sweet
maltol CAS 118-71-8 caramellic, sweet
furaneol CAS 3658-77-3 caramellic, sweet IFRA
furfural CAS 98-01-1 caramellic, sweet IFRA
vanillin CAS 121-33-5 sweet, vanilla Declarable
Cyclotene CAS 80-71-7 caramellic, maple
piperonal CAS 120-57-0 sweet, vanilla
zingerone CAS 122-48-5 sweet, vanilla
damascenone CAS 23696-85-7 sugar, sweet Declarable IFRA

Showing 30 of 1,103. 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
  • caramellic
  • maple
  • sugar
  • sweet
  • vanilla
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere
  • anise, licorice
  • coumarinic
  • licorice
  • praline
  • tonka

The rest of Sweet & Gourmand

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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