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Lactonic Scents
peach; coconut; milky; nutty (various); osmanthus; fig; musk; jasmine; tuberose; solar; waxy. I’m smelling very “lactonic” today! This was a question asked on Bluesky which set me thinking. What makes a “lactonic” note or perfume? Initially, perfumes made of the notes of peach and coconut come to mind, gamma decalactone, gamma undecalactone, gamma nonalactone.Delve into this a little more, lactones are often described as “milky”. To make an osmanthus perfume, or a tuberose, one would use lactones too. Then as I put my perfumes on today, I thought, well, quite a few musks are lactones (e.g. cyclopentadecanolide, and ambrettolide), and fig notes can be made using gamma octalactone, so I…