What Does Clove Smell Like? Perfume Ingredient Guide

What does clove smell like in perfume? Clove smells hot, sweet and spicy, with a warm, woody depth. It gives florals a spicy glow and adds richness to ambers and woods.

Botanical name	Syzygium aromaticum
Plant part	Buds and leaves
Origin	Madagascar and Indonesia
Extraction	Steam distillation
Note	Heart
Scent family	Spices
Odour	Hot, sweet and spicy, with a warm, slightly woody depth
Perfume uses	Spicy florals, ambers and woody blends
Key molecules	Eugenol, β-caryophyllene, eugenyl acetate
Odour impact	Very high
Odour life on a strip	Long: a day or more
Found in	Jacinth Jonquil, Paper Flower Fan, Trevi Rose

Used within IFRA limits. Impact and odour life are our own studio guide, judged on a smelling strip.

What Is Clove?

Cloves are the dried flower buds of Syzygium aromaticum, a tree native to the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. Oil can be distilled from the buds or the leaves; clove leaf oil is slightly drier and woodier.

What Does Clove Smell Like?

Here is how strongly each facet of clove comes through, from our own smelling-strip notes.

How Perfumers Use Clove

Perfumers use clove to add warmth to florals, especially rose and ylang ylang, and to deepen ambers and woods. It is the key note in carnation accords.

The scent of carnation

Carnation flowers yield almost no oil, so their spicy scent is recreated with clove’s eugenol, combined with rose and other florals.

Smell Clove in Prosody London Perfumes

For clove at its most expressive, try Trevi Rose. Clove adds a warm, spicy glow to the heart beside guaiac wood and linden blossom. You will also find clove in Jacinth Jonquil and Paper Flower Fan.