Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, page 180.
Ginger Oil is a pale yellow to light amber-colored mobile liquid.
The odor is warm, but fresh-woody, spicy and with a peculiar resemblance to orange, lemon, lemongrass, coriander weed oil, etc. in the initial, fresh topnotes. The sweet and heavy undertone is tenacious, sweet and rich, almost balsamic-floral. African ginger oil is generally darker in color and presents a more fatty sweetness. Jamaican ginger oil is usually very pale in color, mobile like a pine needle oil, and with a pronounced odor-freshness of lemon-orange-coriander-like character.
The flavor is warm and spicy, slightly bitter at high concentration, but pleasant-aromatic at ordinary use level.
Ginger Oil is used in perfumery to introduce warmth and certain nuances of spicy sweetness which are often wanted in heavy Oriental bases and in a few floral fragrances, too.
In flavors, traces of Ginger Oil have an interesting effect in strawberry, pineapple, peppermint (modifier), but the most important field by far is that of baked goods: cookies, powder cakes, spice cakes, where pungency is not particularly called for.
Ginger Oil is produced by steam distillation, occasionally by water-and-steam distillation of the dried, unpeeled, freshly ground rhizomes of Zingiber Officinale.
Restricted IFRA-standard materials typically present in this NCS at the listed concentrations.
| Constituent | CAS | Typical % |
|---|---|---|
| Citral | 5392-40-5 | 2.8% |
| Geraniol | 106-24-1 | 0.5% |
| Citronellal | 106-23-0 | 0.4% |
| Farnesal | 19317-11-4 | 0.2% |