How To Make Imitation Of The Essense Of Sweet Pea
Scents, like sounds, appear to influence the olfactory nerve in certain definite degrees. There is, as it were, an octave of odors like an octave in music; certain odors coincide, like the keys of an instrument. Such as almond, heliotrope, vanilla, and orange-blossoms blend together, each producing different degrees of a nearly similar impression.
Again, we have citron, lemon, orange-peel, and verbena, forming a higher octave of smells, which blend in a similar manner.
The metaphor is completed by what we are pleased to call semi-odors, such as rose and rose geranium for the half note; petty grain, neroli, a black key, followed by fleur d'orange.
Then we have patchouli, sandal-wood, and vitivert, and many others running into each other.
From the odors already known we may produce, by uniting them in proper proportion, the smell of almost any flower, except jasmine.
The odor of some flowers resembles others so nearly that we are almost induced to believe them to be the same thing, or, at least, if not evolved from the plant as such, to become so by the action of the air-oxidation. It is known that some actually are identical in composition, although produced from totally different plants, such as camphor, turpentine, rosemary.
Hence we may presume that chemistry will sooner or later produce one from the other, for with many it is merely an atom of water or an atom of oxygen that causes the difference.
It would be a grand thing to produce otto of roses from oil of rosemary, or from the rose geranium oil, and theory indicates its possibility.
The essential oil of almonds in a bottle that contains a good deal of air-oxygen, and but a very little of the oil, spontaneously passes into another odoriferous body, benzoic acid; which is seen in crystals to form over the dry parts of the flask.
This is a natural illustration of this idea.
In giving the recipe for "sweet pea" as above, we form it with the impression that its odor resembles the orange-blossom, which similarity is approached nearer by the addition of the rose and tuberose.
The vanilla is used merely to give permanence to the scent on the handkerchief, and this latter body is chosen in preference to extract of musk or ambergris, which would answer the same purpose of giving permanence to the more volatile ingredients; because the vanilla strikes the same key of the olfactory nerve as the orange-blossom, and thus no new idea of a different scent is brought about as the perfume dies off from the handkerchief.
When perfumes are not mixed upon this principle, then we hear that such and such a perfume becomes "sickly" or "faint" after they have been on the handkerchief a short time.
Good Imitation Of The Essense Of Sweet Pea can be prepared by thus recipe
:
Extract of tuberose, 1/2 pint.
Extract of fleur d'orange, 1/2 pint
Extract of rose from pomatum, 1/2 pint
Extract of vanilla, 1 oz.
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