Blood Orange
Juicy sweet orange peel with a tart, berry-like tang and a faint bitter zest.
You may know it from Freshly peeled blood orange
Where it comes from
Pressed from blood orange peel; often supported or recreated with aroma chemicals.
Worth knowing
Its red flesh does not make the scent smell like blood.
About blood orange
Blood orange is a natural mutation of the sweet orange, Citrus x sinensis, which is itself a hybrid, probably of pomelo and tangerine. The red inside the fruit comes from anthocyanin pigments, with cyanidin 3-glucoside the main one. The flesh only develops that colour when the nights are cool while the fruit is growing.
Three cultivars dominate. Moro is the most pigmented of the Italian blood oranges, and research links the differences in colour to genetics. Tarocco is perhaps the sweetest and most flavourful of the three, and the most popular table orange in Italy. Sanguinello was found in Spain in 1929. Blood oranges are grown in the United States too, in season from December to March in Texas and from November to May in California.
The oil is cold-pressed from the peel of Tarocco, Sanguinello and Moro fruit. On the Good Scents Company it reads as sweet orange with aldehydic, tangerine and pulpy facets, and as clean and transparent. Retail glossaries describe it as darker and richer than sweet orange: a juicy, tart opening with a sweet-tart core and berry-like undertones, softening as the acidity fades.
Those same glossaries disagree about the berry. One credits trace compounds, beta-damascenone and linalool among them. Another says reconstructions get the berry character from raspberry ketone. Like other peel citrus oils it is a top note, and one glossary puts that phase at 15 to 30 minutes.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Blood Orange in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Blood Orange most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Blood Orange
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 Blood Orange.