Perfumes with Tonka Bean

Tonka bean smells warm and sweet like vanilla but drier and more nuanced, with hints of almond, freshly cut hay, pipe tobacco and caramel. It comes from the seeds of Dipteryx odorata, a tree native to South America, especially Venezuela and Brazil.

The dried beans are usually processed into an absolute by solvent extraction. Much of their scent comes from coumarin, a molecule that is also widely used in synthetic form. Tonka mostly sits in the base of a fragrance. It pairs well with vanilla, lavender, tobacco, amber, coffee, sandalwood and benzoin, and it is common in fougère and gourmand perfumes.

Tonka Bean appears in 13,380 perfumes in the Fisfis catalogue and is used mostly as a base note.