Perfumery Insight: Cyclamen Aldehyde

Communication between flavorists and perfumers is sadly often limited to chance encounters in the corridors. And even when ideas do manage to wing their way across the great divide, they can all too easily fall on barren ground. As flavorists we have become obsessed with the idea that nature is our guiding light. We are highly suspicious of chemicals that clearly fall entirely outside that comfortable, logical category. The only exceptions we normally encounter are chemicals that are very similar to familiar materials from nature, for example ethyl maltol (FEMA# 3487, CAS# 4940-11-8) and maltol.

Left to my own devices it would have been a very long time indeed before I would have thought of using cyclamen aldehyde (FEMA# 2743, CAS# 103-95-7) (F-1) in anything whatsoever. It is an archetypical fragrance ingredient, highly substantive, with great bloom, but entirely artificial and possessing the kind of overwhelming floral intensity that invariably irritates nearby diners when it is used injudiciously in a fine fragrance.

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