Caraway
Warm, peppery and slightly sweet, like crushed rye bread seeds with a fresh herbal edge.
You may know it from Caraway seeds in rye bread or sauerkraut
Where it comes from
Steam-distilled essential oil from the dried seeds of Carum carvi.
Botanical name: Carum carvi
Worth knowing
It is a seed spice, not the similar-looking cumin.
About caraway
Caraway is a biennial plant of the carrot family, Carum carvi, native to western Asia, Europe and North Africa. Its oil is mostly carvone and limonene, but the split depends on who measured it. Gernot Katzer's spice pages give carvone 50 to 85% and limonene 20 to 30%. A perfumery glossary gives carvone 48 to 65% and limonene 30 to 45%, and an ingredient guide says carvone up to 80% with limonene at 10 to 20%.
The Good Scents Company describes the oil as fresh, herbal, spicy and minty, with balsamic, rye-bread and carrot-like seedy facets, and says it lasts about 20 hours on a smelling strip. A retail ingredient guide lays out a progression: bright, citrusy and dill-sharp at the start, spicy-minty and bread-like in the heart, woody and earthy in the drydown.
According to a perfumery glossary, caraway works as a heart-note modifier at a low dose, under about 0.5%. At that level it adds toasted, dry warmth and a faint minty coolness. The same glossary credits the German chemist Franz Varrentrapp with first isolating carvone from caraway oil in 1849.
That retail guide also names Le Male (1995), Hypnotic Poison (1998) and Santal Blush (2011) as perfumes that list caraway, and calls it a dominant spicy element in Le Male.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Caraway in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Caraway most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Caraway
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 Caraway.