Apple
Crisp, juicy apple flesh with a sweet-tart, fresh green peel smell.
You may know it from a freshly cut apple
Where it comes from
Usually built from synthetic aroma chemicals; apples do not yield a widely used perfume oil.
Worth knowing
It is usually an accord, not apple juice or apple essential oil.
About apple
Ask a perfumer for apple and you get esters. A study of 40 apple cultivars found 78 volatile compounds, 47 of them esters, and its authors call esters the dominant aromatic compounds in apples. Perfumery borrows from that list. Trade articles name hexyl acetate and ethyl butyrate as the compounds that mimic the fruit's crisp, green, juicy side, and one glossary says the note is almost entirely synthetic. Sources differ on extracts: that glossary says no apple absolute is worth using, while another trade article says perfumers can also blend extracts from peels, seeds or flesh with the synthetics.
The Good Scents Company describes ethyl 2-methylbutyrate as sharp, sweet, green apple fruity. The same glossary gives it the sparkling green-apple brightness, hexyl acetate the waxy green, and alpha-damascone a richer, darker cider warmth.
Some apple materials are not trying to be photographs. Verdox, an IFF ester, has fresh apple-green top notes with woody-cedar and violet-ionone facets, and ScenTree lists it for apple and fruity tea notes as well as shampoos and shower gels. Manzanate, Givaudan's name for ethyl 2-methylpentanoate, is described as a ripe apple with cider and sweet pineapple aspects. Givaudan's page places it in water-contact products, for impact and bloom.
According to that glossary, the ester brightness fades first as the note wears. If damascone is in the formula, a warmer, cider-like apple stays in the heart, and without it the note goes fairly quickly.
Perfume Shrine's review of Prescriptives Calyx, which it calls the Prometheus of the hardcore fruity fragrances that dominated the late 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, says Calyx doesn't smell of apple.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Apple in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Apple most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Apple
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 Apple.