The great men of science are usually great authors and their books or articles represent a compact form of their knowledge, but only a fraction. In perfumery things are very different because what is known is not always written or available to the public and "what is written" in very rare cases represents "what is known". The things are much simpler after almost 150 years where the number of books devoted to fragrances continues to increase. Those who knew (great perfumers) did not always write or share and those who wrote were not the most gifted perfumers or not perfumers at all. In the past 15 years I have collected and read more than 90% percent of what was ever published . It is actually amazing to see the number of errors that have traveled from one author to other, up to the present.
One month ago I was reading a recent paper from a scientific journal about classifications, odors and olfactory space, very well documented and with many quotes like any modern academic paper. But from a perfumer's point of view it was full of errors and the conclusions revealed a sad fact - the author had not the slightest clue about the scent of those materials, nor about the composition of natural ingredients.
In the past 15 years several databases with ingredient descriptors have been compiled and sold. Others were built inside some labs and represent the knowledge. That's why very few have access to them, even fewer know to use them. The problem begins when the published databases are taken as the ultimate truth and used in further studies without being questioned. Each molecule and each natural ingredient has an olfactory profile, a set of descriptors that are not in all cases explained in a book (usually devoted to a different subject). It has also a certain vapor pressure, tenacity and impact. Everything can be verified if you smell the ingredient. Lavender essential oil has many facets and if you look inside the composition you can understand them - it is aromatic and herbal but also camphor, earl gray tea, soft fruity, hay like - coumarine, green and mushroom, with some trace notes of jasmine, spice (eugenol), faint woody violet and tobacco but also green galbanum. They are not subjective qualities (how Octavian smells the P&B lavender HE) but on the contrary 100% objective qualities of the oil associated with components having an important odor value. Detecting a green fresh galbanum note in a lavender oil is not subjective. It is actually the TRUTH and this truth belongs to the ingredient (and not to the nose of the "beholder") where you can find very low concentrations of "undecatriene or galbanolene like molecules".
Between what is known inside any lab (from Firmenich to Robertet) and what is known outside there is a big wall.
In the XXth century many classifications of scents were published. The problem emerges when they are supposed to be technical and they are reproduced decades after, with all their errors as a bonus.
One case is a famous table published by a very well known British author, William Poucher who start writing his books (and earning a lot of money) in the 20's. They are still quoted in the introductory section of any American patent devoted to fragrance ingredients. He organized a huge collection of ingredients after their tenacity and his "formulae" were based on this. Unfortunately for him, the evaporation table that is so much quoted is full of errors and you can verify this taking 2 ingredients, writing the time and waiting. The answer comes after several hours. Also, it seems that his written formulae were never put in a bottle (he did not reveal his real and popular perfumes produced by Yardley for colognes or soaps).
Many formulae were published in the XXth century but their number is only equaled by the mistakes they contained. If you are a trained nose and have some experience in formulation you can immediately tell what is wrong inside a formula (ingredient or amount) or if the writer knows how to compose to obtain a given scent. You can find many such books on internet and some could be useful if you can extract the good things. Looking back, more than 50 years after, I can say that many of those authors did not know how to compose, other than basic notes like rose, carnation, jasmine. This becomes obvious when you look at the formulae supposed to evoke the scents in fashion (Chanel No5, Arpège, Chypre, etc). They are all much longer than the original, completely unbalanced as if the essential notes that makes a perfume (the "qualia", the central accord) were totally missed by the author. In some cases, the formulae are full with unnecessary things. If several great perfumers composed some masterpieces after years of work to find the perfect note or balance, you should be a genius to "reproduce" them in a book, within a short time of study and without the GC of today to give you clues. Because a formula (original or not) needed a lot of work (finding the right ingredients and then their balance) but also money because the ingredients were expensive what was published were just "poor sketches" of the real thing. The writers did not earn enough money from publishing (or sharing their "knowledge") compared to the money spent on ingredients to obtain a good "copy" of No5, Arpège, Origan, Mitsouko, if the formulas were for real. In some cases behind those authors were some manufactures who promoted their products (bases, specialties) through a formula, used to produce a low quality perfume by companies outside France or UK.
Another case is that of an American perfumer who wrote many articles in the 60's-70's and much later a book exposing a method based on the technical data of ingredients. His published formulas smelled nothing like the inspiration though his intuitions were correct.
For this reason, unlike any other science field, there is no valuable "Fragrance treaty" and without a critical thinking those "books" should be avoided. On the contrary, the study of great perfumers (Ernest Beaux, Jacques Guerlain, Daltroff etc) is more valuable because you can learn things nobody said before. In some cases the best knowledge of perfumery (how ingredients work and the rules of composition) is the work itself - the perfume - but it is locked to the untrained nose and not at all available to the public. This learning takes a lot of time when formula or its GC is not available, nor the key to understand the information around you.
Sadly, many errors have been repeated by people with little olfactory training who take one thing for a different one in this vast domain with thousands of beautiful aromatic ingredients. The writers from the 60's space age dreamt of a computer to write formulae and a new form of "cybernetic art". It is not impossible but it is extremely important what data you write inside the database and the algorithm you "compose". Fragrance art is time consuming but some "tasks" can be transferred to the "machine" if you know what to ask.
We go back to the study of ingredients that is essential in this art. The nose is never wrong, only the interpretation, if there is not enough information to decode it or to verify it. Last week I was smelling a vintage Guerlain and I was not sure if a note was angelica, elemi or calamus, or all 3. After several hours, I went in the lab with the precise "souvenir" in my head, I opened the bottles with natural RM and I had my answer in 3 seconds.
Another example of objective description for a beloved raw material - cassie absolute: it is powdery anisic like mimosa, but also green and very aldehydic (C9+C10+C12), green cucumber, woody violet, burnt phenolic with a faint leather note and medicinal tuberose on top, going from the green top to the powdery base. Last year I presented this absolute to somebody and he felt rather strange to tell me that he noticed a roasted bacon note plus a cucumber facet and other less seducing facets I will not mention. He was right but I did not tell that actually he detected the guaiacol, the piridine and chinoline plus several other heterocyclic compounds and phenols that represent about 3% in the absolute. I could write half a page only with the main facets of cassie absolute, all objective descriptors of the scent.
Instead of picking descriptors from different authors it is better to smell the ingredients and look inside, what great perfumers have been doing since the late XIXth century. You smell, you think, you write a formula, you evaluate the scent. Sometime a masterpiece can appear.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
