Raspberry

The sweet pleasure of raspberry

Raspberry is the fruit of the raspberry bush, a shrub belonging to the rose family. This fruit can be either cultivated or grown wild. Its name was first mentioned as early as the twelfth century. Raspberry is a fruit formed of a small cluster of about forty tiny drupelets. Each of these is filled with juicy pulp and its outer surface is covered with microscopic hairs. Raspberry thus takes on a velvety appearance. Ovoid and conical in shape, raspberry has a sweet flavor accompanied, with more or less intensity depending on the variety, by a touch of acidity. It is a fragile and delicate fruit that must be handled with care, as it does not tolerate rough handling. Raspberry has nutritional properties similar to those of strawberry. It is also rich in vitamin E and mineral salts, particularly potassium. Likewise, it is the fruit richest in ellagic acid, an antioxidant thought to help prevent certain cancers. Finally, raspberry is known to aid digestive transit. It is generally eaten on its own or processed into jelly or jam, as well as in a wide variety of desserts.

The scent of raspberry

The raspberry note is mainly used in feminine creations. It gives them a fruity touch, both sweet and tangy, somewhere between blackberry, strawberry and blackcurrant. However, as with many fruits, it is not possible to extract an essential oil directly from raspberry. Its scent is therefore reproduced in the laboratory. This is made possible thanks to frambione, a molecule with the sweet odor of this fruit. Other synthetic compounds can also be used for this purpose, such as ethyl formate, butanone or parahydroxyphenyl, which give the scent of a well-ripened raspberry. Likewise, for many, raspberry is somewhat reminiscent of the scent of freshly cut hay. This is explained by its rich ionone content, a molecule also present in hay.

Today, many feminine fragrances contain raspberry, such as Amethyst by Lalique, Agua Del Sol by Escada or Calypso by Lancôme. What is more, as a fun fact, the Milky Way is said to taste of raspberry. Indeed, German astronomers established the molecular composition of a cloud of space dust and detected the presence of molecules similar to those found in raspberry.