What is a fresh scent in perfumery? Perceptual freshness iscorrelated with substantivity

Abstract

Perfumes are manufactured by mixing odorous materials with different volatilities. The parameter that measures the lasting property of a material when applied on the skin is called substantivity or tenacity. It is well known by perfumers that citrus and green notes are perceived as fresh and they tend to evaporate quickly, while odors most dissimilar to fresh (e.g., oriental, powdery, erogenic and animalic scents) are tenacious. However, studies aimed at quantifying the relationship between fresh odor quality and substantivity have not received much attention. In this work, perceptual olfactory ratings on a fresh scale, estimated in a previous study, were compared with substantivity parameters and antierogenic ratings from the literature. It was found that the correlation between fresh odor character and odorant substantivity is quite strong (r = −0.85). Fresh is sometimes interpreted in perfumery as cool and the opposite of warm . This association suggests that odor freshness might be somehow related to temperature. Assuming that odor perception space was shaped throughout evolution in temperate climates, results reported here are consistent with the hypothesis that fresh evokes scents typically encountered in the cool season, while warm would be evoked by odors found in nature during summer. This hypothesis is rather simplistic but it may provide a new insight to better understand the perceptual space of scents.