α-Terpinyl acetate
Also written alpha-terpinyl acetate, terpinyl acetate
Quick answer
The sweet, faintly floral ester that sits alongside cineole in cardamom — the half of the smell that a pre-ground pod loses first, leaving the cooling half behind.
What it does
α-Terpinyl acetate is sweet, soft and slightly floral, closer to a fruit ester than to a terpene, and in cardamom it is what balances the sharp eucalyptus of 1,8-cineole. The proportion between the two is essentially what separates a good cardamom from a harsh one: a pod high in cineole and low in this ester smells medicinal, and one with both smells like cardamom.
How it behaves when cooked
Four properties of the molecule, and what they mean at the stove.
- Volatility
- high
- Fat solubility
- high
- Water solubility
- low
- Heat stability
- low
It is more fugitive than the cineole it accompanies, and that asymmetry is the whole argument for buying cardamom as pods. Ground cardamom loses its sweetness before it loses its cooling note, so an old jar smells recognisably of cardamom and tastes only of the medicinal half — which is the wrong half, and is why cardamom is the spice people most often decide they dislike after meeting it pre-ground. Cracking a pod at the moment of use gets both. The same reasoning applies to lovage seed, where the ester carries the sweetness that keeps it from reading as pure celery.
Spices that carry it
Recorded on the compound rather than on each spice, so the two cannot disagree.
- Green cardamomPrincipal component
The sweetness against the cineole, and the first thing a ground jar loses.
- KorarimaContributing component
Present in the Ethiopian relative of cardamom too, and part of why korarima reads as gentler and sweeter than the Indian spice rather than simply milder.
- LovageContributing component
Not to be confused with
Compounds a reader is likely to take for this one, and why they differ.
1,8-Cineole
The partner, and the more persistent of the two. The ratio is what a taster is judging when they call one cardamom sweet and another medicinal.
Questions this page answers
- what is terpinyl acetate
- what does terpinyl acetate do
- which spices contain terpinyl acetate