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ally a flower) in the gentlest way possible, using large the animal fats readily available in Thailand as a re-
framed glass trays of solid fats and animal fats such placement for spermaceti and lanolin. The study also
as lard. The blossoms are slowly persuaded to give was aimed at developing the whole process to ex-
up their scent as they die, and are replaced daily by tract and utilize animal fats using the enfleurage
other freshly picked blossoms until the fat is satu- method. Blossom flowers of Michelia alba DC were
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rated with the flowerûs essence. Despite the sim- the raw materials for volatile oil extraction using the
plicity of the method and the quality of essential oils animal fats developed for this study.
obtained, enfleurage currently involves high costs due
Materials and Methods
to the cost of animal fats, such as spermaceti and
lanolin (wool fat). For this reason, other techniques This experiment utilized the various kinds of
such as steam distillation and solvent extraction are readily available animal fats in Khon Kaen Province
much more popular than enfleurage. Enfleurage is (pig fat from Sus scrofa, bovine fat from Equus caballus,
still used for delicate flowers with a very low content and buffalo fat from Bubalus bubalis). Pig fat was
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of essential oils such as jasmine and tuberose. How- collected exclusively from the spinal cord where the
ever, if there were a cheaper animal fat that could fat was more solid and less sticky. Then, the fat was
used to adsorb flower fragrance instead of the present cleaned and the sticky and liquid part was removed
costly ones, the enfleurage method would become and sliced into small pieces (Figure 1A).
much more practical in Thailand and could be adapted The other two types of fat were both collected
to extract the essential oils from various aromatic from the testicle area of bulls where the fat was solid
plants in Thailand. and white. The bovine fat was opaque and had an
uneven white color (Figure 1B) whereas the buffalo
Objectives fat was a homogeneous white cream color (Figure

The major objective of this study was to develop 1C). Both types of animal fat were cleaned, with the

A B

Fig. 1A Sliced pig fat
1B Bovine fat
C
1C Buffalo fat