Banana is a creamy, sweet fruit note that recreates the smell of ripe banana, from green and fresh to soft and custardy. It belongs to the fruity family and is built by the perfumer, chiefly around isoamyl acetate, an ester with a pear-drop and banana smell.

What does Banana smell like?

Banana in perfume can smell of just-peeled fruit, with a fresh, slightly green edge from the skin, or of overripe banana bread, sweet and mellow with a faintly spicy, clove-like warmth. The essential ingredient gives a loud, candy-like fruitiness that many people know from banana sweets, so perfumers soften it with creamy and floral materials to make it read as real fruit. Compared with pear, banana is denser and more tropical; compared with coconut, it is fruitier and less milky.

How perfumers create Banana

Bananas offer no essential oil of use in fine fragrance. The workhorse is isoamyl acetate, which also occurs naturally in the fruit. Other fruity esters broaden it, lactones make it creamy, a trace of eugenol-like spice suggests ripe or baked banana, and green notes recall the peel or leaf. Ylang-ylang, which has its own banana-like facet, is a favourite natural partner, and jasmine absolute shares some of the same fruity esters.

• Also known as: Banane, banana leaf (for greener versions)
• Fragrance family: Fruity, gourmand
• Type: Accord (created by the perfumer)
• How it's obtained: Built from fruity esters, lactones and green materials
• Key aroma molecules: Isoamyl acetate, gamma-lactones, eugenol (trace)

Banana in perfume history

Isoamyl acetate has long been used as a flavouring, sold in alcohol as banana oil or pear oil and found in banana sweets and chewing gum. Its brash, sugary character kept banana out of classic perfumery for most of the 20th century, and it only became a named note in the gourmand and tropical scents of the 2000s and later.

Banana in modern perfumery

Banana has become a playful accent in niche perfumery, sometimes paired with rum, leather or smoke to give it a darker twist. In mainstream fragrance it adds a creamy, tropical sweetness to gourmands and summer scents.

How Banana wears and what it pairs with

The bright ester opening is short-lived, but creamy components can linger into the heart. Banana pairs with ylang-ylang, jasmine, coconut, rum, vanilla, tonka, caramel and sandalwood.