Carnations were never one of my favorites. To this day, they remind me of funerals or those cheap flower stands one sees in tourist traps with buckets holding blue and orange long-stem carnations.

Sometimes, not often, but on occasion, an absolute or essential oil smells better than the actual thing. Somehow, the various methods used to concentrate the flower’s aroma—extraction with hexane, enfleurage, distillation, and extraction with carbon dioxide—bring the flower’s fragrance into relief.

Such is the case with carnation. I first obtained the concrete (which is a step before the extraction to make the absolute), opened the tin with little enthusiasm, wondered about the green amorphous mass facing me, and gave it a sniff.

Woah…woah, this stuff is important. It captures the scent of the carnation in a way that is subtle but quite beautiful.

The other two are absolutes and have a correspondingly more intense fragrance. They’re more direct—something we need to make a perfume assertive enough—but lack the delicate feminine subtlety of the concrete. They are all best when used in combination.