How do candlemakers shampoo-makers, etc. get the scents of things that don’t usually have scents, such as strawberries or apples?
In: Chemistry
I own a candle company… candles are made with fragrance oils not essential oils. We get them through manufacturers that have labs that make them.
Strawberries and apples absolutely do have scents.
Candles and soaps are scents using oils.
> candlemakers shampoo-makers, etc. get the scents of things that don’t usually have scents
We buy them from suppliers. We don’t have to make them ourselves, thankfully. We buy them in cute containers and mix them in to our wax/soap batter/ingredients.
As to how the people who *make* the scents get them, that depends on the scent. Natural scents can be extracted from said item and turned in to sweet smelling oils. Other scents that are not possible or impractical to get from the thing being mimicked are created artificially in labs: essentially those are scents that *smell like* the thing in question, or have similar compounds that give off the desired smell.
If you are interested in further reading on this subject, try the fascinating The Emperor of Scent, about Luca Turin and written by Chandler Burr. The author chronicles Turin’s battle to get a fair look at his new theory of the sense of smell, and along the way delves into synesthesia, creating scents for the perfume industry, and the case of a woman who suddenly found that everything she ate tasted like dung.
Okay, my second question is why don’t we usually smell the scent on the actual item itself? Like, I don’t think I’ve ever sniffed a banana and gotten a whiff of that banana scent.
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