Thyme Oil

#### Thyme Oil. The perfume and flavor trade distinguishes between two types of **Thyme**** ****Oil:**** ****Red**** **and **White**. Only the former is a natural distillate. The latter will be discussed at the end of this monograph. **Red**** ****Thyme**** ****Oil**** **is water-and-steam distilled from the partially dried herb of the wild growing **Thymus Vulgaris, Thymus Zygis **or related species, mainly in Spain. The plant grows abundantly in Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, the U.S.S.R., China and, to a smaller extent, in Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Syria, France and various parts of Central Europe. The plant is cultivated all over Central Europe and in many other countries for use as a dried culinary herb. Distillation is undertaken mainly in Spain and Israel. Production in Cyprus was abandoned in 1955 before the time of the author's last visit there. It is regrettable that this outstandingly fine quality of thyme oil is no longer available. Moroccan oils were distinguished by the fact that they were steam distilled from *flower *material. They were accordingly sweeter, but less herbaceous in odor and flavor. It is a matter of personal opinion as to which of the two types is the "best". At the time of the author's most recent visit to Morocco (June 1960), the distillation of thyme oil had been discontinued. The Moroccan thyme grows in an area almost 500 kilometres from the nearest still. **Red Thyme Oil **is a brownish-red, orange-red or grayish-brown colored liquid, rich and powerful, sweet, and warm-herbaceous in odor, somewhat spicy and distinctly aromatic. The flavor is equally warm, somewhat biting, but not bitter or tarry. A sharp and lasting mouthfeel is accompanied by a spicy-herbaceous taste and an outstanding richness in body. There should be no bitterphenolic, cadelike or tarlike notes detectable, but there may be a short bite of terpeney, cymene-like topnotes in poorer oils. The suggested use level is 0.50 to 1.00 mg%, and the Minimum Perceptible is about 0.05 to 0.10 mg%. The oil is used extensively in flavors for food products, in sauces, dressings, pickles, canned meat, etc. In pharmaceutical preparations, the excellent germicidal properties of the oil are exploited in mouth waters, gargles, dentifrices, and for numerous types of disinfectants. Cough syrups, lozenges, etc. are often activated with thyme oil in combination with peppermint, eucalyptus, etc. In perfumery, the oil finds some use in soap perfumes where its power and freshness can introduce a hint of medicinal notes, often desirable in certain types of soap or detergent. The oil exerts an excellent masking effect over tarry odors and thus illustrates brilliantly an example of "distracting" odor effect. Added to lotion perfumes or colognes in trace amounts, thyme oil may lend body and sweet freshness in lavenders, fougère-colognes, citrus-colognes, spicy after- shaves, etc. The oil is highly interesting as a topnote material. Due to its phenol content (the solid phenol, **Thymol**), it discolors rapidly in contact with iron, even iron in trace amounts in other essential oils. Larger concentrations of thyme oil in soap perfumes may also prevent the perfume from being used in white soaps. The oil is not infrequently adulterated—perhaps contaminated—with origanum oil or with fractions of various Spanish essential oils. Commercial lots of origanum oil may be offered under the name of thyme oil merely because of lack of knowledge from the broker's side. Red Thyme Oil is produced in fluctuating quantities of 40 to 100 metric tons per year in the main producing areas. Little or no thyme oil is produced in France today, although large quantities are exported from that country. **White Thyme Oil**, when correctly produced and genuine, is a pale yellow liquid similar in odor to the above-described red thyme, yet somewhat sweeter, less terpeney or sharp. It is also less herbaceous. Truly, it should be a redistilled red thyme oil. But frequently the commercial white thyme oil is merely a "compound" of pine oil fractions, terpineol fractions, rosemary fractions, eucalyptus fractions, red thyme oil fractions, para-cymene, pinene, limonene, caryophyllene, origanum oil fractions, etc. The Thymol content icommercial lots of so-called white thyme oil varies from about 20% to over 60%. A redistilled red thyme oil will usually contain about 60% thymol. **Ajowan**** ****Oil **(see this monograph) is produced almost exclusively in India, and the terpenes from this oil are no more occurring as a common adulterant in Spanish or Moroccan thyme oils.