Тофі

Toffee is what happens when you add butter to caramel. In perfumery, this distinction matters: where caramel is sugar-focused (sweet, bright, clean), toffee introduces a dairy-fat dimension — buttery, creamy, slightly scorched — that makes the accord heavier, richer, and more indulgent.

Explore all seven extraits in the Discovery Set.

The construction adds diacetyl (CAS 431-03-8) [A], the diketone responsible for butter's characteristic smell, to the caramel foundation (ethyl maltol, maltol, furaneol). Diacetyl delivers an unmistakable buttery, slightly caramelised note. Lactones — γ-nonalactone (CAS 104-61-0), δ-decalactone (CAS 705-86-2) — add fatty, dairy richness [B]. Butyl butyryl lactate and acetoin (3-hydroxy-2-butanone, CAS 513-86-0) contribute additional milky, creamy qualities. The combination creates a denser, more opaque sweetness than caramel — less translucent, more substantial.

Toffee and butterscotch accords appear in gourmand compositions where density and richness are wanted over the transparency of lighter sweet notes. The category emerged following the 1990s gourmand revolution that Mugler's Angel (1992) ignited; the dairy-led variation of the basic caramel accord proliferated through the following decade.

Sources & Notes

[A] PubChem CID 650 — diacetyl (2,3-butanedione), CAS 431-03-8, C₄H₆O₂. pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/650. The classic buttery diketone. NIOSH occupational exposure limits apply to aerosolised industrial use, not skin-applied perfumery.

[B] PubChem CIDs 19416 (ethyl maltol, CAS 4940-11-8), 8369 (maltol, CAS 118-71-8), 19309 (furaneol, CAS 3658-77-3), 7710 (γ-nonalactone), 12814 (δ-decalactone). The core caramel-cream backbone of any toffee accord.