Hungary water was one of the first alcohol-based perfumes in Europe, primarily made with rosemary. The oldest surviving recipes call for distilling fresh rosemary and thyme with brandy, while later formulations contain wine, lavender, mint, sage, marjoram, costus, orange blossom and lemon.

Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds (fragrances), fixatives and solvents, usually in liquid form, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent. Perfumes can be defined as substances that emit and diffuse a pleasant and fragrant odor. They consist of manmade mixtures of aromatic chemicals and essential oils. The 1939 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry, Leopold Ružička stated in 1945 that "right from the earliest days of scientific chemistry up to the present time, perfumes have substantially contributed to the development of organic chemistry as regards methods, systematic classification, and theory."