Pumpkin without the pie: squash and smoke in the oil houses

Most pumpkin perfume is dessert. The note usually arrives attached to crust, cream and a cinnamon shaker, and by the second week of October the autumn releases are thick with it. A smaller group treats the squash as a plant instead: cut vine, wet field, flesh rather than filling. Three of them, in three formats and at three very different prices, show how far pumpkin can get from the pie, and where the spice goes once it leaves.

The patch, not the pie

GUNNERSON'S PUMPKIN PATCH from Solstice Scents lists thirteen notes, with no positions given: Leaves, Vine, Autumn Air, Pumpkin Flesh, Lavender, Moss, Balsam, Tonka Bean, Hay, Caramel, Dirt, Patchouli and Mushroom.

The useful part of that list is what is absent from it. No cinnamon, no clove, no nutmeg, no pastry. Pumpkin appears as flesh, which is a wet and faintly bitter thing when raw, and it sits beside dirt, moss, mushroom and hay. The house files the scent as earthy, herbal and gourmand, in that order, and the list earns the ranking: caramel and tonka are the only sweet material in it, outnumbered roughly four to one. Lavender is the oddity, pulling the middle towards something cool and herbal rather than warm.

Angela St. John has run Solstice Scents since 2004, co-owned with Gregory St. John, and the house holds 78 fragrances in the library at $19–$100. Gunnerson's is an eau de parfum at $19.50–$85.

The sweet one, and where its smoke comes from

Spiritus Cucurbitae by Astrid Perfume is the opposite approach, and it is honest about it. Whipped Cream, Vanilla, Milk, Tonka Bean, Peach Blossom, Patchouli, Marshmallow, Coconut Mousse, Pumpkin, Nag Arbat Incense. Pumpkin is ninth in a list of ten, and the dessert material around it is dairy rather than pastry: cream, milk, mousse, marshmallow.

What stops it being a bakery is the last note. The house files the scent gourmand, smoky and earthy, and the smoke is incense, not char and not clove. That is a different kind of October: a sweet oil with a thread of temple smoke through it rather than a spice rack. Astrid hand-blends in a single perfume room in Rosebush, Michigan, and describes the oils as concentrated, so that "a little goes a long way". This one is $30.

Pumpkin spice with the pumpkin taken out

Swamp Witch comes from Simons Nest, the shop of illustrator Autumn Simons in South Devon, which sells roll-on oils and solid perfumes alongside prints and cards. It is the only one of the three with notes given by position: Vetiver, Gloomy Cedar and Pinewood Forest on top; clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in the heart; damp patchouli, cardamom, black pepper, pink pepper and vanilla-infused sandalwood in the base.

The heart is the pie chord exactly. The rest of the structure removes any reason to read it as food: conifer and vetiver above, two peppers below, and the only sweet note in the formula bound to sandalwood. Filed spicy, woody and earthy. It is sold as a solid perfume at $18, or as perfumed oil at $10 for 5ml and $18 for 10ml, which makes Simons Nest the cheapest of the houses named here.

Two siblings extend the same idea. Blood Moon runs blood orange and berries over dragon's blood, incense and pink pepper, with clove and benzoin underneath, and is filed fruity, spicy and smoky. Nutcracker Creep swaps squash for chestnut, peel and brandy, then goes to star anise, frankincense, charred cedarwood and infused vanilla pods. That one is a gourmand, but a charred one.

Where clove goes when it leaves the pie

Clove sits in 207 fragrances in the library, most often beside cinnamon, patchouli, amber and vanilla. That company is why the note reads as autumn baking by default. Take the vanilla out and it travels.

Headmistress ($22–$90) puts clove with plum, muscadine grape skin, cognac, labdanum, oakmoss, paper and a wooden ruler: spicy, fruity, amber, and nothing like a dessert. The Mirror ($22) sends it into balsam fir, buddha wood, weeping cypress, carnation, oud and cardamom. Widdershins ($30) keeps clove and cinnamon inside a fruit bowl of quince, apple, plum and blood orange, with sage and tuberose, and butter cookies as the single sweet note. Wolves ($30) reduces the whole thing to amber, vanilla, tobacco, a pair of patchoulis and clove.

Further out, the same spices stop being autumnal at all. Present Gambit from Toskovat' buries clove among nearly thirty listed notes, from passionfruit to driftwood to a chess board, at $326 and currently out of stock. The ALVIVA from Teone Reinthal Natural Perfume in Brisbane stacks clove, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and cardamom under bitter orange, yuzu and grapefruit, and the house files it citrus, floral and amber: 110 AUD–900 AUD.

Sweet, and not sweet

On the catalogue data alone:

• Openly sweet. Spiritus Cucurbitae and Nutcracker Creep both sit gourmand-first, on cream and marshmallow in one case and dried fruit, benzoin and vanilla pods in the other. So does Iced Persimmon ($22), which lists frozen custard, a waffle cone and a sugar cone, with clove and nutmeg on top.
• Half. Gunnerson's Pumpkin Patch ranks gourmand third, and its sweetness is caramel and tonka against dirt, moss and mushroom. Widdershins is fruit and spice with one cookie note.
• Not sweet. Headmistress and The Mirror list no dessert note between them, only resin, wood, moss and spice. Swamp Witch's only sweet material is the vanilla attached to sandalwood in its base, and Blood Moon's base is benzoin and sandalwood rather than sugar.

The short version: the pumpkin-patch scents tend to be earthy, the pumpkin-dessert scents tend to be dairy, and the spice rack is the part that can go either way.

Where to start

• Swamp Witch, $10 for 5ml of oil, $18 for the solid or 10ml. For anyone who wants pie spice with no pie, and the cheapest way to test whether that is true for them.
• GUNNERSON'S PUMPKIN PATCH, $19.50–$85. For the field rather than the kitchen: hay, mushroom, dirt and lavender with the squash raw.
• Spiritus Cucurbitae, $30. For readers who do want the sweet pumpkin, but with incense smoke instead of a crust.