Salted Caramel
1 fragrance with this note
Part of accords: Sweet, Gourmand, Marine / Salty, Caramel, Salty
- Origin
- an accord composed by the perfumer
- Raw materials
- caramel, creamy and “salty” notes
- Extraction
- synthesis
- Olfactory group
- gourmand
- Position in the pyramid
- heart and base
- Synthetic substitutes
- ethyl maltol, furaneol, Ambroxan (saltiness)
Salted caramel is caramel with butter and a pinch of sea salt. This dessert from French Brittany conquered the world with its contrast of sweet and salty, and in perfumery it has become one of the best-loved gourmand notes.
How it smells: warm, dense and appetising: melted caramel, butter, a slightly burnt sugar crust and a light mineral, salty shade. Salted caramel sounds cosy but not cloying — the salt makes the sweetness more grown-up.
Salt itself has no smell, so the perfumer conveys saltiness with mineral and ambergris notes — the very ones that read as “skin after the sea”. Next to caramel they create the sense of a salty dessert.
What it pairs with: with vanilla and tonka — cosy dessert compositions, with coffee — a “caramel latte”, with amber — salty-sweet skin, with nuts — “salted praline”, with tobacco and rum — warm evening gourmands.
Good to know: Breton salted caramel owes its existence to the local salted butter: butter was salted in Brittany because the region was exempt from the salt tax (the gabelle) that applied in most of France.
