Cetyl alcohol — a long-chain fatty alcohol that is nearly odorless, with only a faint waxy, tallow-like whisper. Used more as a fixative, emollient, or texturizing agent than for its own smell.AI · claude-opus-4-7
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Perfume and Flavor Chemicals, page 650.
Snow-white or colorless leafy crystals
Insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol, miscible with most oils
The pure material is virtually odorless. Lower grade commercial products may have a faint, sweet, oily odor and a bland taste.
It finds some use in flavor compositions in minute traces in imitation chocolate flavors, mainly to introduce a mouthfeel, rather than a taste.
Although very extensively used as a cosmetic raw material (for creams, etc.), this alcohol is rarely, if ever, used in perfumes as a fragrance material.
The concentration used is about 2 ppm in the finished product.
Produced by alcoholic saponification of the Palmitic ester of Hexadecanol (Spermaceti from the Whale is almost pure Cetyl palmitate)