Safranal

Say itSAF-ruh-nal

Warm saffron, hay and leather with a sweet, medicinal-herbal edge.

What it is: A molecule made in a lab.
Where it comes from: saffron's main odorant, made synthetically for perfumery
When you smell it: Heart: the first hours.
What perfumers do with it: Gives a saffron signature to leather, oud and spicy-rose accords at traces.
Worth knowing: It does not exist in the living flower; it forms from picrocrocin as the stigmas dry.
Rules: Limited. IFRA caps it at 0.005% in fine fragrance (2020).
Also called: 2,6,6-Trimethylcyclohexa-1,3-diene-1-carbaldehyde

Not on the label of any of the 232 perfumes read so far.

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