Let’s Enfleurage!

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Twenty-four to forty-eight hours later the fats will have absorbed most of the available fragrance from the flower petals. Which means it's time for you to pick fresh blooms, pluck their petals, open the sealed dishes, and replace the old blossoms with the new ones. Then reseal the containers and set them aside again. Over the next week or so, repeat this step of replenishing the fragrance-depleted petals several more times ... until the fats become so entirely saturated with a flowery scent that they can't possibly benefit from exposure to one additional periwinkle. At this point, congratulate yourself: you've successfully made pomade.

ALCOHOL ENTERS THE PICTURE

So far, so good. However, you can't (or probably won't want to) wear pomade. Instead, you need a way to extract the delightful aroma from the fat so that you can bottle just the scent for use as a perfume. And this is where alcohol enters the picture.

What you do, first of all, is chop the pomade into small bits and—using a coat hanger, glass rod, or other imple ment-stuff the little pieces into bottles so that each is about half-filled with the fragrant fat. Next, fill the containers to the brim with rubbing alcohol and cap each bottle tightly as soon as it's filled (Fig. 5) to prevent undue evaporation of the liquid.

Then comes the hardest part of all: stash the tightly sealed vessels in a dark place for three months—that's right, three months —and shake each bottle from time to time to ensure that the contents are properly mixed. At the end of the storage period, you're ready for the final step in the production of your perfume.

FIXATION

Gather up all the bottles of alcohol-pornade and set them down at your worktable. Then, using a fine-sieve, strain the aromatic alcohol into clean bottles—again with tight-fitting caps—and seal each one in turn to prevent undue evaporation (Fig. 6).

Because of alcohol's volatile nature, a substance known as a fixative must then be added to the scented liquid in order to retard vaporization. Two fixatives are commonly used for this purpose: oil of cedar and oil of sandalwood.

Whether you choose oil of cedar or oil of sandalwood as your fixative is purely a matter of personal preference. I should point out that, although your perfume's scent will primarily reflect the blossoms and/or spices you selected in the beginning, the fixative cannot help but add a scent of its own to your Eau de Roses, or whatever. Thus, whichever oil you choose—or even if you use both together—you'll be forced to compromise between counteracting the volatility of the alcohol on the one hand, and being able to retain as much of your primary scent as possible on the other.

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