Pimenta Berry Oil

#### Pimenta Berry Oil. Pimenta berry, better known as "**Allspice**", is a popular household spice, and the layman who is familiar with the odor of all-spice would certainly recognize this odor in pimenta berry oil. The leaf oil, however, would not be identified as "allspice" by the average housewife or cook. This is the same situation as the one we find with clove bud oil versus clove leaf oil or with cinnamon bark oil and cinnamon leaf oil. It is interesting to see that a layman, familiar with a certain product through the frequent use of it, is often better qualified than a perfumer (who may not have been brought up with the true botanical spice in his everyday food or delicacies, etc.) when it comes to discrimination between two closely related essential oils or products. **Pimenta Berry Oil **is steam distilled from dried, crushed, fully grown, but unripe fruits of the West Indian tree, **Pimenta Officinalis**. Certain manufacturers insist on water distillation, and there is reason to believe that this type of distillation yields a superior quality of oil. The tree is a native of the West Indies, and grows wild abundantly on many of the islands, particularly Jamaica. In Guatemala, Venezuela, Honduras and Trinidad, various related species of the tree also grow, and they yield slightly different essential oils. Oils from Jamaican fruits are generally preferred by the flavor houses and most perfume houses. Distillation takes place on a wide scale in Europe and the U. S. A. from imported berries and in modern stills. There are a few European houses who specialize in this oil and other spice oils, all of which call for a good deal of experience and skill in the field of distillation technique. **Pimenta**** ****Berry**** ****Oil**** **is a pale yellow liquid with a warm-spicy, sweet odor, presenting a peculiar, but fresh and clean topnote and a long-lasting, sweet, balsamic-spicy bodynote with a tea-like undertone. There is a certain resemblance to clove bud oil in the slightly sour-fresh, fruity topnote. Any dryness in the odor, any lack of sweet freshness and dullness of the dryout, should arouse the suspicion of the evaluator. The flavor of pimenta berry oil is equally warm, sweet, not burning, slightly peppery, but not dry. The odor of the air over the liquid flavored with pimenta berry oil is initially light and fresh. This is typical of the berry oil. For this reason, the oil is used extensively in fruit flavors of the "heavier" type, e.g. plum, blackcurrant, pineapple, cherry, etc. The main use, however, is in food products such as meat sauces, spice blends for pickles, sausages, etc. The suggested use level would be about 0.50 to 1.50 mg% with wide variations from these figures according to the type of product in which the oil is incorporated (acids, vinegar, sweet sauces, canned food with little juice, etc.). The Minimum Perceptible is about 0.25 to 0.50 mg% for a good grade pimenta berry oil. It appears from these figures that the oil is not a very powerful flavor material. Besides, these figures were established as a threshold for the concentration at which pimenta berry oil could still be distinguished from clove bud oil. Upon further dilution, it was no longer possible to distinguish accurately between the two oils. In perfumery, the role of pimenta berry oil is limited to that of a modifier in the modern "spicy" types of "men's fragrance", fougère, after-shave, etc. and occasionally as a "special note" of warm and sweet-spicy character, e.g. in chypre, Oriental bases, etc. It blends excellently with ginger oil, geranium, geraniol, nerol, neryl acetate, lavender, amyl salicylate, opopanax, labdanum products, isoeugenol, ylang-ylang, methyl cinnamic aIdehyde, methyl ionones, patchouli, orris products, etc. **Pimenta Berry Oil **is unfortunately very often adulterated with pimenta leaf oil (see monograph), or clove leaf oil, clove stem oil, fractions from the isolation of eugenol, from redistilled eugenol, etc. Eugenol is the main constituent of pimenta berry oil. Among the more typical components are methyl eugenol, cineole and phellandrene, all of which are available as partially synthetic or isolated, low-cost materials. Caryophyllene is present in pimenta berry oil, but may not be a constituent of the fruit itself (see **Oleoresin **of **Pimenta Berry**, next monograph). Water-distilled pimenta berry oils contain less caryophyllene than do the steam distilled oils. **Pimenta Berry Oil **is produced in quite sizeable amounts, and it is estimated that the total world production exceeds 100 metric tons per year. Exact figures are hard to establish since significant quantities of Leaf oil come on the market and are sold by the same houses which sell the fruit (berry) oil.