Exactly What are Essential Oils?

For a start  the term “essential oil” is a misnomer as they do not contain the fats that are usually a part of anything we class as oil. Therefore they are vastly different from the vegetable oils pressed from nuts, olive flesh and seeds. Essential oils are volatile, and if left exposed to the air will evaporate completely becoming the airborne vapours detected by our sense of smell.

The fragrances of plants come from different parts, for example cinnamon is extracted from bark, ginger from roots, basil from leaves, ylang ylang from flowers, lemon from the fruit rind.

There is a range of extraction methods, depending on the oil. For example oils in citrus rinds are extracted by simple pressing. For most other plants a distillation process is used.