Orange flower and Petitgrain Water Absolute

#### Orange flower and Petitgrain Water Absolute. Absolute from the distillation waters of bitter orange flowers, twigs and leaves is a rather ill-defined product. Attempts have been made to exploit the distillation waters from numerous essential oils, but only a few have proven to be useful to the perfumer or to give an attractive yield. One of the most interesting "water oils" is the one extracted from a mixture of orange flower water and petitgrain bigarade water, the so-called "**Eau de Brouts**". This absolute is produced in the Grasse region of France. The yield is quite good, but the production is not carried out on a very large scale or possibly many distillers use the extracted absolute in their own business to "improve" or "sophisticate" the absolutes or essential oils of orange flowers, etc. Pruning of the bitter orange trees yields a certain amount of "brouts" (= twigs) which are steam distilled with the leaves to petit- grain oil. The distillation waters yield one type of "eau de brouts" absolute by extraction with petroleum ether. This absolute is a yellowish to orange-yellow or brownish-yellow liquid with a strong but not very tenacious odor, musty, dry, faintly floral, more herbaceous (herb-like) and heavy. The typical notes have been described by perfumers as being "bread-like" or "broccoli-like". The latter term came from an American perfumer who is quite familiar with the Italian vegetable delicacy, broccoli. The author finds that this description is just as striking as "tossed green salad" or "green peppers" is for galbanum resinoid. In any event, it is obviously not a typical floral note. But this material contributes excellently to the naturalness of certain other fragrances, e.g. jasmin, ylang-ylang, neroli(!), gardenia, stephanotis, honeysuckle, etc. It may be an exaggeration to call it "the missing link" between an ordinary floral base of the above type and the perfect, true-to- nature duplication, but this absolute certainly has interesting effects to offer to the creative perfumer. It blends well with chamomile oil, helichrysum oil, bergamot oil, cardamom oil, broom absolute, karo-karoundé absolute, petitgrain oil, myrrh, opopanax, lavandin absolute, etc. This absolute is produced on a very limited scale, but it can be made available in sizeable quantities upon request. Its area of application is not very wide, and its price is about one-tenth of the price of orange flower absolute. These facts help make the material regularly available from France.