Enfleurage

Enfleurage is a process, not an odorant. The scent of an enfleurage absolute differs from a solvent-extracted absolute of the same flower because the extraction temperature and contact time are different. Enfleurage absolutes of jasmine, for example, tend to retain more of the green, indolic, slightly animalic top notes that hexane extraction strips or alters.

Enfleurage was developed in the Grasse region during the eighteenth century as a solution to a specific problem: certain flowers — jasmine, tuberose, jonquil — continue emitting volatiles after being picked, but their aromatic compounds degrade under the heat required for steam distillation. Cold fat offered a gentler medium.

The process uses two forms. In cold enfleurage (enfleurage à froid), purified tallow or lard is spread across a glass pane set in a wooden frame (chassis). Fresh flowers are pressed into the fat and left for 24 to 72 hours, depending on the flower. The spent flowers are removed and replaced with fresh ones. This cycle repeats — up to 36 times for jasmine — until the fat is saturated with aromatic compounds. The resulting scented fat is called pomade.

In hot enfleurage (enfleurage à chaud, or maceration), the fat is heated and flowers are immersed directly. This method works for sturdier materials like rose petals but is less common in the literature.

The pomade is then washed with ethanol, which dissolves the aromatic molecules out of the fat. The alcohol is evaporated under low pressure, leaving an absolute — the enfleurage absolute. This product is chemically distinct from a solvent-extracted absolute: the cold-fat process captures more of the flower's headspace profile, including lighter top notes that solvent extraction destroys.

Commercial enfleurage effectively ended by the 1930s, when volatile solvent extraction (using petroleum ether, then hexane) proved faster, cheaper, and scalable. A few artisans in Grasse and independent perfumers maintain the technique at very small scale. The resulting absolutes command prices ten to fifty times higher than solvent-extracted equivalents.