There was a time when the most expensive ingredients were used in fine fragrances and marketing meant how to bring the product to the client and not to cheat with beautiful words.
I chose a page from a Charabot catalog from the 30's showing the floral ingredients used for luxury perfumes, and their price/kg. Essences intégrales were a special type of absolute, something like an haute couture extract brought to perfection, with no equivalent today. After the absolute was obtained in the traditional way (as it is the case today) it was then treated to eliminate several unwanted olfactory notes, pigments or soluble waxes. It was described as the equivalent of what terpeneless and sesquiterpeneless oils are to essential oils. You have the jasmine absolute and you distill it under pressure to eliminate the top terpenes. Today you dream if the brief allows you a drop of jasmine in the fragrance. In this list you will see some unusual extracts, some completely forgotten or unknown today like honeysuckle, lily, reseda or violet flowers (the violet leaves extracts are on a different page). The of price Essences Intégrales was about the double of the regular absolutes. The price of tuberose extract was not mentioned here but usually it was almost twice the jasmine (it was cultivated in Grasse unlike today). In the same catalog there are 10 types of orris extract and 11 types of oakmoss but also other unusual ingredients like the hyacinth absolute. I have no idea about the equivalent in today's money.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
