An oil and an absolute are not the same material — three things measured across 50 pairs

About 5 minutes.

Last time I measured that 35.6% of records sharing a CAS are filed under different odour types, and that the commonest reason is a different extraction.

This article narrows that into one comparable question: for the same plant, how do the oil and the absolute differ?

The data

Pulling plants where a record named "X oil" and one named "X absolute" both exist with suppliers gives 50 pairs.

They do not have the same fields filled in, so the three findings below have different sample sizes. I state each denominator, because it determines how hard the conclusion is.

One: odour type disagrees in 31%, with a readable direction

45 pairs have an odour type on both sides, and 14 disagree — 31%.

Plant	Oil	Absolute
Frankincense	93 suppliers · terpenic	10 · balsamic
Lavandin	51 · floral	37 · herbal
Geranium	38 · floral	22 · green
Coriander seed	86 · floral	2 · herbal
Marjoram	65 · spicy	2 · herbal
Angelica root	46 · amber	1 · musk
Lovage root	37 · spicy	3 · herbal
Angelica seed	33 · terpenic	1 · spicy
Cilantro leaf	30 · green	1 · herbal
Oakmoss	1 · green	42 · mossy
Tonka bean	1 · coumarinic	40 · tonka
Hay	6 · herbal	34 · hay
Mastic	8 · balsamic	15 · resinous
Flouve	3 · mossy	2 · tonka

The direction is not random. Look at the first six rows: the oil-side words are terpenic, floral, spicy, green — volatile molecules leading. The absolute-side words are balsamic, herbal, mossy, musk, tonka — heavy material that stays.

Steam distillation can only carry the volatile fraction; solvent extraction brings waxes, pigments and high-boiling material along. The two odour types are the names given to that difference.

Two: the strength field disagrees four times, and the absolute is always lower

Only 7 pairs have a strength value on both sides — coverage of that field is poor — and 4 of them disagree:

Plant	Oil	Absolute
Labdanum	high	medium
Ambrette seed	high	medium
Cistus twig/leaf	high	medium
Myrrh	medium	low

All four have the absolute one step lower, and none goes the other way.

With n=4 this is a hint at a direction, not a rule. But it is consistent with the previous section: the volatile fraction was left behind in the still, and the strength field measures the impact you get on smelling.

Three: an absolute is never shorter than its oil

Only 6 pairs have a substantivity value on both sides.

Plant	Oil	Absolute
Galbanum	72 hours	400 hours
Neroli	116 hours	192 hours
Patchouli	400	400
Cistus twig/leaf	400	400
Labdanum	400	400
Ambrette seed	332	332

Two absolutes longer, four identical, none shorter.

Galbanum differs by 5.6×. The four identical pairs are identical because they all hit 400 — the ceiling of that field — so "identical" here means "both exceeded what the field can measure".

The sample is 6, and 4 of them are eaten by the ceiling. Strictly, this database observes a real difference in only two cases.

Suppliers: oils outnumber absolutes 4.3 to 1

This item has complete coverage across all 50 pairs.

• Oils total 2,287 suppliers
• Absolutes total 534
• Only 9 pairs have more absolute suppliers than oil: oakmoss, tonka bean, hay, labdanum, cistus, mastic and a few others

Those nine share something: they are base-note materials. Oakmoss, tonka bean, hay, labdanum — nobody buys the "oil", because the plant's value sits at the heavy end.

What the literature says

I could not find a paper directly comparing an oil against an absolute of the same plant. That is the biggest data gap in this article, stated plainly.

But one paper comes close enough. Léva and colleagues compared two distillations in Molecules in 2026 — laboratory-scale hydrodistillation (HD) of dried biomass against semi-industrial dry steam distillation (SD) of fresh biomass — across seven economically important species including Lavandula angustifolia, sage, hyssop, peppermint, spearmint, yarrow and spruce.

The result has two layers:

HD consistently yielded a more chemically diverse volatile profile than SD.

Unsupervised Principal Component Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis achieved absolute binary segregation between the HD and SD fractions for every species.

Note that this is a difference between two distillations. Both are water and heat; the variables are dried versus fresh biomass and laboratory versus semi-industrial scale. And they still separate completely.

So the difference between steam distillation and solvent extraction can only be larger. That is my inference rather than the paper's conclusion, but the direction is clear.

What to do

• State the extraction alongside the material. "Geranium absolute" and "geranium oil" are two odour types in this database.
• For a base, look for the absolute; for top and middle, the oil. All nine plants where absolutes outnumber oils are base materials.
• Do not derive an absolute's dose from the oil's. All four disagreeing strength pairs differ by one step.
• An absolute's colour and viscosity are different. The waxes and pigments solvent extraction carries over end up in your product.
• Re-evaluate when you change extraction. Treat it as a new material.

What this doesn't establish

• The three findings have very different sample sizes: 45 pairs for odour type, 7 for strength, 6 for substantivity. The latter two are hints at a direction only.
• The 50 pairs come from string matching on "X oil" and "X absolute". Other names — concrete, resinoid, CO2 extract — are not included, and one plant may exist in more forms.
• Odour type, strength and substantivity are the database's judgements, not my measurements. Disagreement may be real difference or editorial inconsistency; that limit is also stated in the previous article.
• 400 is the ceiling of the substantivity field, so "four identical" does not mean they genuinely last the same time.
• Léva's paper compares two distillations, not an oil against an absolute. What I take from it is that extraction conditions produce statistically separable compositional differences; extrapolating to solvent extraction is my inference.
• I did not look up compositional analysis for any pair.
• Supplier count describes coverage, not sales.