Kneaded Goose Pear Tent Incense From AliExpress
After I’d tried some Goose Pear Tent incense sticks from AliExpress, I was curious to also try a kneaded variant. Especially since the recipe is originally for kneaded incense.
I bought this bag with 20g or approximately 50 pellets at a shop called Goodness Cloud Pavilion Store, at which I and also my friend Povilas (who often sends me samples) have already shopped multiple times.
The (now gone) listing included other fragrances that all cost the same. I paid €7.60 for the bag.
The original Goose Pear Tent recipe is a mixture of agarwood and sandalwood powder that’s filled into a hollowed-out quince (Goose Pear) and steamed in it.
The juice and sugar contained in the fruit and probably its pectin seep into the powder, lend it a special aroma and make it possible to form it into small pellets.
Part of the fruit flesh can also be integrated into the incense dough.
I consider it unlikely that these Goose Pear Tent pellets are really authentic, if only because of the low price. But that doesn’t have to mean they’re bad.
The pellets are mostly of equal size, approximately 8mm in diameter.
They have a whitish, matte surface. I’m not sure whether this is a thin powder coating or perhaps caused by oxidation.
The pellets are relatively dry, but not completely hard.
They can be crushed between the fingers and then break apart.
The consistency is then rather crumbly.
If you heat the pellets, they get glossy.
If you take them from the heat source at this point, they remain shiny, and even after cooling they remain slightly sticky.
Perhaps it’s a sugar coming out?
If you leave them on the warmer, it doesn’t take long until the pellets look matte again.
Here you can see a fresh (left) and an almost spent ball (right) in comparison.
The pellets lose their whitish matte appearance after heating and become darker until they’re mostly black.
At that point, they can’t be crushed any more.
I use a tealight incense heater for these incense pellets.
I find the aroma of these Goose Pear Tent pellets refreshing; however, the fragrance also has a certain warmth to it.
The raw scent that rises out of the bag is fruity, sweet and juicy, with a slightly watery freshness. The fragrance strongly reminds me of honeydew melons.
The aroma of the pellets when heated is a little weak; I quickly moved on to using them in pairs. That way, the intensity is sufficient to pleasantly scent my living room.
The smell on the heater is again very fruity, but less specifically like melon. The watery-juicy character of the fragrance persists.
Added to it is just a trace of woodiness that’s so minimal that I keep wondering whether I’m only imagining it.
At the beginning, the pellets smell the freshest and the most watery; then the fragrance becomes a bit sweeter, fuller and the fruitiness intensifies.
At the end, some tartness is added, or a note of browning sugar as well as a certain roasted aroma.
In all phases, I perceive a trace of something perfume-like, even though I don’t find the smell itself perfumy or synthetic. However, I’m pretty sure that these pellets are perfumed in some form, or that some perfumery molecules got used here.
Povilas gave me a perfume cream a while ago (also bought on AliEx) that exudes exactly this watery freshness that I find in the different Goose Pear incenses.
This perfume cream, however, is sold as ‘Agarwood’ fragrance. Povilas has told me that he’s also tried the Goose Pear variety, but that he finds that the Agarwood one, with its watery, cooling fragrance, smells more like Goose Pear than the actual Goose Pear variety, which is more floral and lacks the cooling fragrance.
Unsurprisingly, these perfume creams contain exclusively synthetic fragrances.