Peanut Butter is a gourmand accord that recreates the rich, roasted, salty-sweet smell of peanut butter. Created by the perfumer, it is part of the gourmand family and smells nutty, toasty and oily, with a comforting savoury edge that makes it unusual among sweet notes.

What does Peanut Butter smell like?

Peanut butter smells of roasted peanuts ground into a creamy paste: toasty, earthy and nutty, with a slightly salty, buttery richness. In perfume it can be played sweet, like peanut butter cookies or chocolate cups, or kept closer to the jar, with a warm, oily, savoury character. It is heavier and more roasted than hazelnut or almond notes, which tend to be sweeter and more marzipan-like.

How perfumers create Peanut Butter

Roasting creates alkylpyrazines, the compounds behind the nutty smell of roasted peanuts, coffee and cocoa, and perfumers use synthetic pyrazines as the core of the accord. They add buttery lactones and creamy notes for texture, vanillin or ethyl maltol for sweetness, and a salty or mineral note to evoke the savoury side. Because pyrazines are extremely powerful, they are used in tiny amounts.

• Also known as: Peanut, peanut paste
• Fragrance family: Gourmand
• Type: Accord (created by the perfumer)
• How it's obtained: Pyrazines combined with creamy, sweet and salty materials
• Key aroma molecules: Alkylpyrazines, lactones, vanillin

Peanut Butter in perfume history

Peanut butter's origins lie in patents from 1884, when Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal protected a process for milling roasted peanuts, and in John Harvey Kellogg's 1898 patent. Despite popular belief, George Washington Carver did not invent it. The smooth, non-separating style came after Joseph Rosefield's 1922 process. It has no classical perfumery history.

Peanut Butter in modern perfumery

Peanut butter is a niche and indie curiosity rather than a mainstream note, appearing in playful, food-inspired fragrances and in home fragrance. It suits perfumers who enjoy contrasting sweet and savoury.

How Peanut Butter wears and what it pairs with

It is a heart-to-base note with good tenacity. Peanut butter pairs with chocolate, strawberry or grape jam accords, banana, honey, caramel, vanilla and sandalwood.