Rattata2
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Chemical composition of spices and aromatic/flavorful natural substances
I'm looking to compile a chart listing the chemical composition of the essential oils of most common spices, including the rough percentage of the oil
that each chemical makes up.
I've found one resource so far with this information, in the book "Natural Sources of Flavourings", by the Council of Europe..but it's only a google
books preview, and I don't think it contains all the different spices etc that I'm looking for. However, it does contain the format I'm looking for,
eg:
Tarragon
camphene 0.01-0.35%, myrcene 0.65-1.70%, limonene 0.60-4.65%
etc.
However again, I can't access the full book, and it's like $80 or more, so I can't really buy it atm.
I'm looking to find more resources with this kind of information. Anybody know where to look?
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Nicodem
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In the scientific literature, obviously. The analysis of the secondary metabolites in living organisms is a science after all. Besides the information
in the dozens of thousands scientific articles, hundreds of review articles and dozens of books, there is even one free database: Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases.
…there is a human touch of the cultist “believer” in every theorist that he must struggle against as being
unworthy of the scientist. Some of the greatest men of science have publicly repudiated a theory which earlier they hotly defended. In this lies their
scientific temper, not in the scientific defense of the theory. - Weston La Barre (Ghost Dance, 1972)
Read the The ScienceMadness Guidelines!
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EssOilChem
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The Council of Europe webpage, found here, just may have the pdf file you desire (for free! I think thats probably the same thing you saw on google, maybe not), however that particular book looks very
limited on which oils and spices they researched. Searching their site at the top may give you more results though. If you need a book, it helps to
type the name of the book in quotations into google, and then outside of quotes, type "pdf" and hit search.
Perhaps the best way would be to look up each oil or spice individually, would probably be the fastest way... Nicodem's link above has a lot of great
info.
Wikipedia usually has these listed right on each oil's page, under "components," by percent, with references (so you can see if its actually worthy of
believing). The reason its hard to find certain percentages of compounds in each oil is because its not going to be uniform at all. The percents of
each compound can vary greatly depending on where and when (time of year) each plant was harvested. It can depend on a lot of other factors too. This
book (a very long read), has percentages of chemical compounds of herbs, spices, and essential oils taken from multiple samples so, I guess you
could take an average of the samples...
This book looks promising: "The Aromatherapy Workbook" Going for like $0.41 cents on Amazon right now.
This page, has most oils and their components, however doesn't state a percent. But it does have some valuable information (in the reverse form of
the way you want to look it up (which oils contain terpenes, alcohols, phenols, ketones, etc.).
This pdf (book, vol. 1) and this pdf (book, vol. 2) hosted right here on sciencemadness, has ALOT of valuable information that you may be interested in.
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