An extremely pungent, sulfurous alliaceous odor — sharp, tear-inducing raw onion character with fatty, cooked-onion facets underneath. Persists as a savory, slightly meaty green note. Overwhelming in isolation; used at trace levels in specialty flavor and rare gourmand/savory perfume experiments.AI · claude-opus-4-7
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Perfume and Flavor Materials of Natural Origin, page 290.
Onion oil is a brownish yellow, occasionally pale yellow mobile liquid with a very strong odor (when undiluted, it is obnoxiously sulfuraceous) and distinct lachrymatory effect.
The oil consists of higher sulfides (disulfides) and traces of low-boiling aliphatic aldehydes. The flavor of onion oil is warm-aromatic, spicy, biting or pungent (according to the concentration), very similar to the flavor of raw onions.
To the author’s knowledge, onion oil is used exclusively in flavors, never in perfumes, although such application is very possible (violet, hyacinth, rose, etc. can benefit from minute traces of onion oil for a distinct part of the topnote).
The oil has found an increasing outlet in the canning industry in flavors for soups, meat, table sauces, dressings, etc.
The onion of Allium Cepa was subjected to steam distillation.