How To Make Extract of Tonquin
Tonquin, or Tonka.
The seeds of the Dipterix odorata are the tonquin or coumarouma beans of commerce. When fresh they are exceedingly fragrant, having an intense odor of newly made hay.
The Anthoxanthum odoratum, or sweet-smelling vernal grass, to which new hay owes its odor, probably yields identically the same fragrant principle, and it is remarkable that both tonquin beans and vernal grass, while actually growing, are nearly scentless, but become rapidly aromatic when severed from the parent stock.
Chemically considered, >tonquin beans are very interesting, containing, when fresh, a fragrant volatile otto (to which their odor is principally due), benzoic acid, a fat oil and a neutral principal—Coumarin.
In perfumery they are valuable, as, when ground, they form with other bodies an excellent and permanent sachet, and by infusion in spirit, the tincture or extract of tonquin enters into a thousand of the compound essences; but on account of its great strength it must be used with caution, otherwise people say your perfume is "snuffy," owing to the predominance of the odor and its well-known use in the boxes of those who indulge in the titillating dust.
Extract of Tonquin Recipe
:
Tonquin beans, 1 lb.
Rectified spirit, 1 gallon.
Digest for a month at a summer heat.
Even after this maceration they are still useful when dried and ground in those compounds known as Pot Pourri, Olla Podria, &c.
The extract of tonquin, like extract of orris and extract of vanilla, is never sold pure, but is only used in the manufacture of compound perfumes.
It is the leading ingredient in Bouquet du Champ—The field Bouquet—the great resemblance of which to the odor of the hay-field, renders it a favorite to the lovers of the pastoral.
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