What is Bitter Almond Essential Oil?

Bitter Almond Essential Oil carries the delicious scent of marzipan with it. A beautiful and delicate ingredient to add to your DIY skincare products. NOT intended as an ingredient in dishes.

This oil is obtained via fractional distillation from the almonds of the bitter almond tree (Prunus amygdalus var. amara). These are different almonds than from the sweet almond tree (Prunus dulcis 'Ferragnès'), which you normally eat.

This Bitter Almond Essential Oil consists of at least 96% benzaldehyde.

It is not the same as Sweet Almond Oil. Sweet Almond Oil is very suitable as a carrier oil, while Bitter Almond Essential Oil must be used very sparingly. The nuts of the bitter almond contain the toxic substance amygdalin and are therefore not safe to eat.

How do you use it?

It is important to strongly dilute Bitter Almond Essential Oil, due to the high benzaldehyde content. It is recommended to never process more than 0.02% in deodorant, 0.09% in perfume, 0.27% in body lotion, 0.14% in face products and 1% in soap. For making other skincare products we strongly recommend doing proper research and sticking to the formulation.

This oil combines nicely with Vanilla CO2 Extract, Ylang Ylang Essential Oil and Pink Grapefruit Essential Oil.

This oil is NOT intended as a flavoring, to ingest or to vaporize in the aroma diffuser.

Store the oil in the refrigerator.

What is so special about it?

Increasingly, synthetic almond aroma is being added to skincare products. If you are looking for a natural ingredient to give your product the scent of almonds, Bitter Almond Essential Oil is what you need.