Unexpectedly smelling the scent of an orange being peeled is a uniquely life-affirming experience. In an autobiographical essay entitled, “The Scent of an Orange,” Jane Townsend recounts how this scent lifted her spirits when recurrent cancer and its treatments sapped her will to live.

“Then one day in the lunch room, a friend came in and started to peel an orange. The scent of the orange wafted towards me and, as I smelled it, I felt a thrill, a joyful feeling. I suddenly thought, I really don't want to die now. I want to smell things like this again. It was in that instant that I began to live with a renewed eagerness, anxious to experience the small joys of life more fully.

This orange incident put me back in touch with my will to live. I sat there in pain, smelling the orange, and I was so happy to be alive. I learned in that moment to look beyond the pain to see what else there is in life. I found out then, and since then, that there's always something else. As long as I can find something positive in my life, I'll be okay. I'm pretty good now at finding something joyful just about anywhere, however small it might be.”

We have known other cancer survivors who recounted reading Jane Townsend’s story during a low moment and deciding that if the scent of an orange was good enough for her, they too could stay present and connect to positive experience, even though this may have nothing to do with their prognosis.

Sweet Orange Oils

Orange peel oils can be expressed or distilled. Expressed oils are of a higher quality and are more likely to be used in perfumery and flavor applications. Much of the distilled production comes from peels that have already been expressed and is used for further refinement into isolates such as d-Limonene. The distilled oils are much less stable and are likely to go rancid quickly without addition of preservative agents. The expressed or cold-pressed oils will also degrade faster than other perfume ingredients as the terpenes (Limonene makes up 90% or more of orange oil) will degrade into other compounds with less desirable scents. Getting rid of the terpenes and sesquiterpenes, which can be done through vacuum distillation of the expressed oil, yields a more stable material, but one that loses much of the sweet freshness driving interest in the material in the first place.

Sweet Orange Oil Aromatic Properties and Chemical Composition

This study has a nice analysis of the chemical composition of sweet orange juice and peel.

Bright Citrus: d-Limonene makes up 90% or more of the expressed peel oil. This is the characteristic sweet, orange, fresh smell

Terpenic, Woody, Herbal: Beta-myrcene and gamma-terpinene are the two most common compounds after limonene. These compounds, along with sabinene at a lower dose, lend a characteristic “terpenic” scent, with oily, woody, peppery, lemon/lime, tropical, herbal, rose, balsamic and plastic notes

Piney: alpha-Pinene and delta-3-carene both lend a bright herbal piney note

Aldehyde: Octanal (aldehyde c-8), even at 0.3%, is the jump off the peel and smell me compound. It is characteristically orange peely, green, waxy, and fatty