Almond
Sweet marzipan, creamy nuts, and a faint cherry-like warmth.
You may know it from Marzipan
Where it comes from
Made from almond-derived materials or recreated with aroma chemicals.
Botanical name: Prunus amygdalus
Worth knowing
It often smells like marzipan rather than plain raw almonds.
About almond
The almond smell in a perfume comes mostly from one molecule, benzaldehyde, a colourless liquid. Its smell is sweet, nutty and cherry-like, with a faintly medicinal, powdery undertone. The same molecule sits behind the smell of cherry pits and bitter almonds, which is why perfumers' almond leans toward cherry and marzipan.
Sweet almond oil, the pressed oil sold as a carrier in aromatherapy and cosmetics, has almost no smell of its own. The scent comes from the bitter variant. There, benzaldehyde is released when enzymes break down amygdalin in bitter almond and stone-fruit kernels, and hydrogen cyanide and glucose come out with it. A raw bitter almond can yield 4 to 9 milligrams of hydrogen cyanide.
That is why a bottle of bitter almond oil may carry the letters FFPA, "free from prussic acid", meaning the cyanide has been stripped out. One supplier puts the finished oil at 98% benzaldehyde or more. The kernels behind a "bitter almond" label are often apricot, and sometimes cherry, plum or peach. Most almond in perfumery now is synthetic benzaldehyde made from toluene. A "natural" version can also be made from the cinnamaldehyde in cassia oil.
Benzaldehyde forms the bright first impression of a fragrance and fades quickly, and in air it oxidises to benzoic acid, which has no smell, so formulas built on it need careful stability testing. As it recedes, heliotropin and coumarin take over. Heliotropin smells sweet and powdery, somewhere between vanilla and almond. Coumarin, which is found in tonka bean, brings hay-like warmth and has an almond side of its own.
Dior Hypnotic Poison, composed by Annick Ménardo in 1998, lists bitter almond among its head notes. Bois de Jasmin, reviewing it, wrote about "the milky bitterness of almonds".
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Almond in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Almond most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Almond
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Almond.