Tangerine - Reconstitution

While Mandarin Peel Oil is well known and is produced on a fairly large scale, the peel oil of the closely related Tangerine is a comparatively rare oil. The tangerine tree, Citrus Reticulate, grows in Florida, Texas and California (U. S. A.), and is actually the American variety of the East Asian Mandarin. The tangerine has recently been introduced in Guinea, West Africa. Small amounts of oil are produced there by hand (“spoon scraping method”). Algeria produces a machine pressed mandarin oil. The tangerine is much larger than the mandarin, almost globoid, and its peel is usually yellow or pale yellow to reddish. It is cultivated mostly for sale as a whole fruit and for the canning of cleaned sections. Tangerine Oil is machine pressed from the ped of the ripe fruit in the canning factories. The oil is orange colored, mobile and with a fresh, sweet odor, reminiscent of bitter orange and of Valencia orange oil, rather than of mandarin oil. It completely lacks the characteristic dryness and “perfumery” notes of mandarin oil, and it is also much “thinner” in body. Tangerine Oil cannot be used as a replacement for mandarin oil in perfumery or flavor work. It constitutes a particular citrus note, but it is not sufficiently characteristic to become very interesting. It is used to some degree as a modifier in colognes, as a topnote material in aldehydic perfumes, etc.