The Perfumer's Studio Part 4: Bakhoor, Pom, and Perfume Digressions
Bakhoor is a Middle Eastern incense that’s typically very heavy with oud, a perfume made from agarwood. As eager as I was to experiment with it, I was skeptical as well because agarwood is not my favorite scent. I confirmed this again when Persephenie had me sample a few oud perfumes individually. While I appreciate that oud is a singular, complex scent, it was just too aggressively savory and rank for me. (One of them smelled like an ex-boyfriend’s armpits, which had a certain…appeal…but not something I’m looking for in incense). What we made was Persephenie’s riff on bakhoor: a liquid base of rose water, sugar syrup, melted resins and perfume poured over sandalwood chips and herbs and left to dry. For my mix, I chose frankincense and guggul resins, pohinahina, orange peel, and rooibois: a bright, tropical bakhoor.
I spent a while trying to figure out what perfume I wanted to mix. Persephenie gave me a crash course in perfumery, setting out a selection of top, heart, and base note essential oils for me to chose from. I chose one in each register: ginger, frankincense, and…I don’t remember the base. (I blame the delicious brain fog I’d fallen into from smelling so many gorgeous things over the last 4 days.) This juicy and gingery perfume went into the mix of sandalwood chips, herbs, resins and syrup. The resulting green-dusted potpourri smelled great on all on its own.
While I worked on the bakhoor, Persephenie received a package from India. She opened the box and took out several triple-wrapped silver cylinders, beaming eagerly: new attars and absolutes! Now it was her turn to be the kid in the candy store. She cracked open each one and smeared my hands and hers with intense, intoxicating scents: ginger lily, jasmine, blue lotus, and white lotus, which left a pollen-yellow stripe on my skin. The ginger lily transported me to my first trip to Big Island to visit my parents, where the smell of ginger flowers greeted me as I stumbled out of the plane. Even through a scrim of plane exhaust, that aroma promised paradise. Persephenie, grinning animatedly as she too sampled these pure ingredients, was clearly in her element. I felt very privileged to share such fabulous rare scents.
Back home, I busted out some charcoal and tried my bakhoor as soon as I could. It had a zesty, gingery sweetness that paired well with the sandalwood and green herbs, though the sugar in the mix added an over-toasted marshmallow scent that wasn’t my particular jam. I also learned the hard way that just a dab will do ya when it comes to this stuff. Persephenie only burned a few shreds or tiny spoonfuls at a time. I, meanwhile, with my tendency to binge on stuff I love, burned big honking thumb-sized chunks every night for a week, which filled my house with smoke and my lungs with irritation. I hadn’t had raw lungs since I stopped smoking ganja! I’ll have to save charcoal-burned incense as a once per week treat, alas.
Pom
The final incense Persephenie taught me was one I’d never heard of before: pom. This Guatemalan incense was a blend of palo santo and copal resins, water, gum arabic, powdered tonka and vanilla beans, and palo santo wood shavings. This is shaped into cakes and dried. Since I don’t care for palo santo, Persephenie let me substitute additional copal and red cedar shavings. Of all the non-combustibles we made, this and the nerikoh were my favorites. Pom was a very easy incense to throw together and made attractive little cakes that looked like carrot muffins. When burned, the copal gave a mysterious, holy note to the Christmassy red cedar and the comforting coumarin of the tonka bean and vanilla. My pom would make a lovely holiday gift: Feliz Navidad in Oaxaca! If I make it again, I would like to use a black copal for even more of that uniquely Mesoamerican funk. It will be fun to experiment with other wood and resin combinations, too.
Takeaway
I am so very happy that I gambled on learning from a professional artist. Not only was Persephenie a knowledgeable teacher and professional, but her genuine enthusiasm for the medium was a joy to share. If anything, it was fantastic to have 4 straight days where I could do nothing but talk incense with someone who was nerdier about it than me! Yes, some of my experiments didn’t quite work, but experimentation was the point. It was so much fun getting to play with so many ingredients I’d never met. I have no idea if I’ll ever try to make incense professionally (or even as a fun side gig), but I do know this: I love incense even more than I did already. This medium speaks to me more than anything else has. I can’t wait to see what more I can discover! Thank you, Persephenie!
