Avocado oil

Portrait

The avocado tree belongs to the laurel and cinnamon family, native to the high valleys of Mexico and Guatemala, where it has been cultivated for more than five thousand years. Its name comes from the Nahuatl ahuacatl. It is a large evergreen with tough leaves and pear-shaped fruit whose flesh, unique among fruits, is nearly a third fat. The oil is pressed from that flesh, not from the pit.

An oil from flesh

Most vegetable oils come from seeds. Avocado oil, like olive oil, comes from the pulp of the fruit, and that changes everything: colour, texture, scent. Cold-pressed and unrefined, it is a deep emerald green from chlorophyll, with a vegetal, buttery, slightly nutty aroma. Refined, it turns pale yellow and odourless; that is not the one Étienne chooses.

Origin

The shop's oil is first cold-pressed and unrefined, made from Mexican fruit too ripe or too small for the fresh market. It is thick and rich, and keeps well away from light.

In the workshop

This is the base oil for nearly all of Étienne's macerations: poplar buds, pine resins, fir needles, calendula flowers. Its silky texture and green colour mark the shop's balms and perfumed oils. In the kitchen it handles heat very well and gives salads a taste of vegetable butter.