{"id":79,"date":"2012-07-18T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/18\/bitter-almond-oil\/"},"modified":"2012-07-18T12:52:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T11:52:00","slug":"bitter-almond-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/18\/bitter-almond-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitter Almond Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitter Almond Oil<\/i> is one of those curious perfumery ingredients that isn\u2019t at all what it appears to be: it<\/span> almost certainly won\u2019t have been made from almonds, bitter or otherwise, isn’t bitter and<\/span> <\/span>may<\/span> be <\/span>natural or synthetic.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bitter Almond Blossom<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n<\/div>\n

What is called<\/span> <\/span>Bitter Almond Oil<\/i><\/span> <\/span>and was originally and is still occasionally made from bitter almond kernels –<\/span> <\/span>Prunus amygdalus<\/i><\/span> <\/span>Amara – is now more usually made from apricot, plum, cherry or peach kernels (or by synthesis from various pre-cursors, most commonly toluene). It consists of about 99%<\/span> <\/span>Benzaldehyde<\/a><\/span> <\/span>whether made from a natural or a synthetic source, and may be sold as<\/span> <\/span>Bitter Almond Oil<\/i><\/span> <\/span>in either case.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>When almonds are used it is the press-cake remaining after extraction of the fixed almond oil that is the starting point which is macerated in warm water prior to extraction. A substance called Amygdalin<\/b>, present in all the kernels mentioned, is converted by enzymatic action into<\/span> <\/span>benzaldehyde<\/b><\/span> <\/span>and <\/span>hydrocyanic acid<\/b><\/span> <\/span>(what is commonly called cyanide when people are talking about the poison, once also called<\/span> <\/span>Prussic Acid<\/i><\/b><\/span>). There is enough cyanide present in about 10 drops of the crude oil to kill an average person, and it is poisonous by ingestion<\/span> <\/span>and<\/i><\/span> <\/span>by inhalation, so the oil is quite useless at this point as a flavour or perfume agent. The process is nearly identical when it is made from the kernels (stones) of apricots, plums, cherries or peaches.  <\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nAs an aside, amygdalin is also present in apple pips<\/b><\/i>, so far as I know they have never been used as a commercial source of the oil, but if you\u2019ve ever heard that apple pips are poisonous, now you know why.  In practice they don\u2019t contain cyanide unless they are crushed up and fermented and tend to pass through the human gut whole, so if you\u2019re in the habit of eating your apples core-and-all you\u2019re not likely to come to any harm.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>The crude oil is cleaned by alkali washing and rectification resulting in the nearly pure benzaldehyde that is sold widely as<\/span> <\/span>Bitter Almond Oil<\/i><\/span>. Oddly enough it\u2019s main use in flavouring is as a sweetener – so not only is in not usually made from almonds but it isn\u2019t bitter either! The odour is familiar to most people as marzipan, which was traditionally made with about 1% bitter almond kernels ground up with the sweet almonds into a paste. Now it is more likely to be made with all sweet almonds and some benzaldehyde added to flavour it.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>According to Arctander<\/a>, Hydrocyanic acid smells rather similar to Benzaldehyde – though I don\u2019t recommend testing that assertion.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Arctander also has this to say about the natural vs synthetic origins of the oil:<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n

Bitter Almond Oil is very rarely produced from bitter almonds. If the oil is a natural distillate at all, it is most often produced from other kernels (see above). A large part of all the so-called bitter almond oil in the market is actually a refined synthetic benzaldehyde, supposedly free from chlorine. The labelling FFPA stands for \u201cfree from prussic acid\u201d (old name for hydrocyanic acid). The abbreviation FFC means \u201cfree from chlorine\u201d, and is obviously applied to synthetic products.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

He goes on to say that some of the imitations of the natural distillate contain traces of (deliberately added) hydrocyanic acid and if completely free of chlorine, are thus identical with the natural product. I\u2019ve no idea whether this kind of adulteration continues today, but it seems likely.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Benzaldehyde by the way isn\u2019t very stable and tends to turn into Benzoic acid (white crystals that are essentially odourless) on exposure to air and consequently it is often sold with some ethanol added to improve stability.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>Benzaldehyde is highly volatile liquid: a top note if you use it in perfumery and isn\u2019t all that widely used. I happen to have some at the moment because one of the things I\u2019m researching is a lilac fragrance, in which it is a component.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nA draft of this material appeared on the fragrance discussion forum Basenotes in this post<\/a>.<\/span><\/span>
<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitter Almond Oil is one of those curious perfumery ingredients that isn\u2019t at all what it appears to be: it almost certainly won\u2019t have been made from almonds, bitter or otherwise, isn’t bitter and may be natural or synthetic. Bitter Almond Blossom What is called Bitter Almond Oil and was originally and is still occasionally made from bitter almond kernels – Prunus amygdalus Amara […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,10,67,8,17,30],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}