Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Traditional Eau de Cologne formula

I would like to give you a traditional formula of Eau de Cologne one of the oldest perfumes that still exist. I always have a bottle beside my bed and use it when I have a headache. It's refreshing and uplifting.

Fantasy colognes are usually modifications of standard Eau de Cologne with floral or other notes to impart special character to the fragrance, small dosages of essential oils such as geranium, rose, ylang ylang, patchouli and vetivert may be used for this purpose. Also interesting is omitting some oils like lavender or rosemary and introducing an aroma chemical such as Lilial, Anisaldehyde, iso amyl salicylate etc. To compare you can make a completely synthetic Eau de Cologne.


Here is the formula:


Bergamot oil 27
Lemon oil Sicilian 20
Sweet orange oil 16
Neroli oil 12
Lavender oil French 6
Rosemary oil Spanish 4
Thyme oil white 1
Clove bud oil 1
Petitgrain oil 3
Clary sage oil 2
Benzoin resinoid, siam 1

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting, dear Jenny,
Now the folks these days a couple of years ago used the Bergamote with lots of Bergaptene in it. hmmm I always find something is missing when comparing with the Bergaptene free quality.
In such an eau de toilette formula the difference will show for sure. Eventually, one would need to add a touch corriander to compensate?

Jenny said...

I still don't have the bergaptene free bergamot because I use the oil for my own use but was wondering if there would be a difference in smell. So there is a difference? How could Corriander help it to compensate?

Anonymous said...

In my nose, I find the components that miss to be somewhat flowery (there coriander does not help) and a touch woody (there the corriander would help). Hmm, I also find it flat in a sense (the one without bergaptene), stripped off some essential parts, less powerful, more lighthearted in a sense.

Jenny said...

I will compare the two ones, but I also think there are many different qualities in essential oils. I had times I bought an essential oil and it didn't have the complexity of the real oil so it was in a sence fake or half fake. I really like the quality of Prima vera oils you can smell the difference. Could orange blossom absolute help for the flowery part maybe?

Anonymous said...

Hello Jenny,

A very interesting blog you have!

Is this "Eau de Cologne" comparable to the Farina version?
I heard that Grapefruit is a component of Farinas Eau de Cologne but do not see it on your list of ingredients hence was wondering what yours is like.
Greetings
Neil

Jenny said...

Dear Neil,

I don't know if the eau de cologne of Farina has grapefruit and I didn't try it in this formula. I heard that grapefruit oil is a bit tricky to use in fragrances. Where did you read about it? I now have Bergamot FCF and it's a bit different than the normal bergamot but it isn't bad at all.

Anonymous said...

I remebered hearing it whilst taking the museum tour in Cologne.

Wikipedia has a section on it (not to be taken as gosple though)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eau_de_Cologne

And the official Eau de Cologne website mentions it in the sentence:
"Italienische Limette, Bergamotte, Neroli, Petitgrain, Orangen, Citronen, Pampelmuse, Cedrat waren die hauptsächlichen Ingredienzien."

from: http://www.eau-de-cologne.com/

Which mentions "Pampelmuse" which according to wikipedia is 'Citrus maxima', this is probably closer to a Pomelo than a grapefruit,and these days the word grapefruit is possibly used to prevent confusion. I'm not sure how easy it woudld be to obtain the oil? (And have even less idea how diffictult it is to use in fragrances)

Jenny said...

Dear Neil,

Thank you so much for the interesting link about Eau de Cologne. Grapefruit oil is obtained by cold pression and it's available in a lot of shops who sell essential oils, it's not expensive. I don't remember why grapefruit oil was hard to use in fragrances, I guess it's because of the sulfur it contains. But I'm not sure about it.

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