Ice Cream

The ice cream accord is a perfumer's construction rather than a single raw material. There is no ice cream oil to distil, so the effect is built — usually from lactones, which smell milky and faintly coconut-like, plus vanilla, a little sugar and something cold and airy to suggest the chill.

What separates a good ice cream accord from a generic sweet one is that coldness. Lactones give the creamy body, but on their own they read as warm milk. Perfumers add airy, slightly metallic or violet-leaf facets to suggest low temperature, and the result is a note that feels soft and cool at once.

It belongs to the gourmand family, which arrived properly in the 1990s and has dominated mainstream perfumery ever since. Ice cream accords sit comfortably beside vanilla, tonka bean, pistachio, caramel and iris, and they are often used to round the edges of a composition that would otherwise be too sharp.

Worn well, it should suggest dessert without smelling like a dessert trolley — the best examples stay close to the skin and read as softness rather than sugar. Browse the Redolia fragrances that use an ice cream accord below.