BLACK PEPPER OIL
BLACK PEPPER oil
Natural ingredient for perfumery overview
🔎 Botanical Name: Piper nigrum
Olfactive description
Its odor is fresh, dry- woody, warm-spicy, reminiscent of the odor of dried black pepper and elemi, cubeb, and other essential oils of high terpenesesquiterpene content. The flavor of the oil is surprisingly flat, somewhat dry-woody. At high concentrations, the taste is slightly bitter. When more dilute, it presents only a mild spiciness. The essential oil has no pungency at all since the pungent principles of black pepper are not distillable with steam
Specific character: Spicy
Where it grows
The plant is a native of southern and southeastern India, possibly also the Indonesian islands known as the Sunda Islands. Smaller quantities also come from Madagascar, the Comoro Islands, and Thailand.
In Madagascar, in Nossi-Bé, and the Comoro islands, smaller quantities of black pepper are steam distilled in local stills. This is one of the very few “on-the-spot” distillations of pepper oil. (S. Arctander)
Method of extraction
The essential oil of black pepper is produced by steam distillation of dried, crushed but not quite ripe fruits of the pepper vine, Piper Nigrum.
How or when to use it
Oil of Black Pepper is used primarily in flavor work as a modifier for other spice flavors where pungency is not wanted or needed. Seasonings, spice sauces and dressings, meat, and other canned food are often flavored with black pepper oil and other spice oils. (S. Arctander)
In perfumery, the oil gives interesting effects with eugenol and isoeugenol, e.g., carnation and rose bases, Oriental fragrances, modern, dry-aldehydic bases, ambres, etc. The effect in a rose base is particularly interesting. Although Phellandrene is one of the oil's main constituents, it seems impossible to obtain a similar effect with pure phellandrene (isolated from other essential oils) or with substitutes for black pepper oil. (S. Arctander)
Appearance
Black Pepper Oil is an almost water-white or pale greenish-gray, mobile liquid which becomes more viscous on aging.
Chemistry
~ 24% Beta-caryophyllene
~ 9% Delta 3 carene
~ 6% Alpha Pinene
~ 5,5% Eugenol
Impact
Black Pepper oil will impact the composition from the top to the middle note.
Fulvio Ciccolo, 2022
Perfume and flavor chemicals, S. Arctander, Denmark 1969.
Photo by Sonika Agarwal on Unsplash
