Banana
Ingredients · Fruits · Made in a lab
Banana
Bananas yield no perfume extract; the ripe, sweet note is rebuilt in the lab round isoamyl acetate, the ester that gives the fresh fruit most of its smell.
- What it is
- A fruit whose smell can’t be extracted, so perfumers rebuild it from other materials.
- How perfumers build it
- Known in
- Counterplay (Mind Games)
- Worth knowing
- The bright yellow of shop bananas comes from ripening near 18 °C; Cavendish bananas ripened in tropical heat stay green.
Named by the house in 3 of the 1282 perfumes read so far


