24.4 What traditional process extracted perfume from flower petals?
Description
This article is from the Chemistry FAQ, by Bruce Hamilton B.Hamilton@irl.cri.nz with numerous contributions by others.
24.4 What traditional process extracted perfume from flower petals?
The traditional cold-fat extraction process is known as " enfleurage".
It is a very interesting, historical process used to obtain the essential
oils and perfume components from rose, jasmine, and other flowers. The
rose and jasmine flowers continue to produce perfume during the long
process. Thus the technique can obtain more perfume from those flowers than
if they were just macerated and extracted by hot fat, solvent or steam
when they were picked - as happens to many other plant perfume sources.
The process uses a fat comprised of 40 parts of beef tallow and 60 parts
of lard. The two fats are melted together, and repeatedly beaten under
cold water and alum solutions to purify them. Benzoin is added to the
fat mixture to prevent biological degradation.
The fat is spread about 4mm thick on both sides of 0.5 x 0.5 metre glass
plates in wooden frames. Flowers are pressed into the fat on one side of
the frame only, and the frames stacked vertically so that the flowers are
very close to the layer of fat on the frame above. After 1-3 days, the
flowers are stripped off and fresh flowers added to the other layer of fat
that had not been used, and the frame are again stacked. The cycle is
repeated about 30 - 35 times, or until the fat is saturated with perfume.
The saturated fat is known as "pomade". The fat is removed from the frames
and extracted with alcohol to collect the perfume. the alcohol is cooled
and filtered to remove most of the dissolved fat. The alcohol solution
is called the "extract", and the residue after evaporation of the solvent
is known as the "enfleurage absolute".
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