Coriander

Spicy and warm yet floral and fresh, with a delicate citrus and woody tone from the seeds.

Coriander is an annual member of the carrot family native to the Mediterranean and Western Asia; because it also grows wild in many places there, its original range is hard to pin down. A distinction is made between large-fruited forms, grown mainly in warm countries such as Morocco and India, and small-fruited forms from temperate latitudes. For oil production the small-fruited types are more interesting, as they contain considerably more essential oil. Today coriander is cultivated in many countries, including India, Morocco, Canada, Romania and other parts of Eastern Europe.

Perfumery uses not the leaves but the ripe fruits, usually sold as “seeds”. After harvest they are dried. The essential oil is obtained by steam distillation and afterwards separated from the distillation water. The yield is usually around 1% – small-fruited varieties give roughly 0.4 to 2% depending on origin, large-fruited ones often less than half a percent.

Coriander oil works in the top and heart notes: its high linalool content brings a bright, floral freshness, while terpenes such as γ-terpinene and α-pinene add a spicy, citrusy accent. Coriander thus links fresh openings with floral hearts and lends compositions an aromatic, slightly peppery spice. In our range, coriander appears in 43 fragrances, 26 of them in the top note and 17 in the heart.

Spicy · Aromatic · Top and heart note

Coriander is an annual: its fruits ripen a few months after sowing. Once dried they store well, so the distilled oil is available all year round.

In our fragrances, it often appears alongside Patschuli, Bergamotte, Amber, Vanille, Moschus, Sandelholz, Zedernholz.

Coriander is one of the oldest known spice plants. In Mycenaean Greece it appears on Linear B clay tablets from the palace of Pylos among the ingredients for scented oils, and Hippocrates also mentions it around 400 BC. Coriander fruits were found as a grave good in the tomb of Tutankhamun. To this day coriander is used as a spice (fruits), a culinary herb (leaves) and a raw material for perfumes.

• Whether coriander leaves taste like soap depends partly on a genetic variant near the olfactory receptor gene OR6A2, which responds to aldehydes.
• The name probably goes back to the Greek kóris, “bug” – unripe coriander fruits smell of bedbugs; only when ripe do they smell spicy and floral.
• The Torah compares manna, on which the Israelites lived in the desert, to coriander seed – a sign that the spice was widely known at the time.

The seed oil consists of around 60% to two thirds floral linalool (C₁₀H₁₈O, PubChem CID 6549), whereas the leaves are dominated by aldehydes such as (E)-2-decenal (C₁₀H₁₈O, CID 5283345). Coriander produces mainly the (S)-enantiomer, (+)-linalool (CID 67179), formerly also called coriandrol; it smells sweet and floral, while (R)-linalool, found for example in lavender, is woodier. The oil also contains terpenes such as γ-terpinene (C₁₀H₁₆, CID 7461) and α-pinene (C₁₀H₁₆, CID 6654). The olfactory receptor gene OR6A2 encodes a receptor that responds only to aldehydes and binds (E)-2-decenal with high affinity.