Oils

Apple Seed Oil

INCI Pyrus Malus Seed Oil. Also: Pyrus malus seed oil, Malus domestica seed oil, Apple pip oil.

The saponification value here is derived, not published. No primary document we could use gives one for Apple Seed Oil, so it is calculated from this record's own fatty-acid composition: chain lengths fix the molar mass, which fixes how much hydroxide a gram of fat consumes. That gives 191.7 mg KOH/g, ±3 %.

That is stoichiometry on a measured composition rather than a guess, and it is about as well determined as a published figure: checked against the 35 Codex oils where both fields come from the same standard, the method's median error is 0.90 % and its 90th percentile 2.74 %, with no meaningful bias. The formula page shows the working. If you have a certificate of analysis for your lot, enter its measured value in the calculator and this estimate is set aside.

Published values

Saponification value	not published
Derived from composition	191.7 ± 3 % mg KOH/g
Used by the calculator	191.7 mg KOH/g (derived)
SAP for NaOH	0.1366 g/g
Iodine value	121–127 g I₂/100 g
INS (SAP − IV)	68
Melting point	—
Unsaponifiable matter	—

A bar made of 100 % Apple Seed Oil

Hardness 9 below 29–54

Cleansing 0 below 12–22

Conditioning 87 above 44–69

Bubbly lather 0 below 14–46

Creamy lather 9 below 16–48

Conventional qualities summed from the fatty-acid groups; a single-oil bar is a reference point, not a recipe.

Fatty-acid profile

Fatty acid		Published range, %	Used
Palmitic acid	C16:0 · saturated	5.68–9.73	7.7
Palmitoleic acid	C16:1	0–0.17	0.1
Stearic acid	C18:0 · saturated	1.27–2.22	1.7
Oleic acid	C18:1	21.76–35.22	28.5
Linoleic acid	C18:2	50.04–66.73	58.4
α-Linolenic acid	C18:3 n-3	0–0.87	0.4
Arachidic acid	C20:0 · saturated	0.96–1.48	1.2
Gadoleic acid	C20:1	0.27–0.9	0.6
Behenic acid	C22:0 · saturated	0.19–0.4	0.3
Lignoceric acid	C24:0 · saturated	0–0.21	0.1

Where these numbers come from

MDPI (Foods), open-access copy via PubMed Central; supplementary file via Europe PMC — Fotiric Aksic M., Lazarevic K., Segan S., Natic M., Tosti T., Ciric I., Meland M. Assessing the Fatty Acid, Carotenoid, and Tocopherol Compositions of Seeds from Apple Cultivars (Malus domestica Borkh.) Grown in Norway. Foods 2021, 10(8), 1956 (doi 10.3390/foods10081956) · document dated 2021-08-22 · read 2026-09-24

Section 2.3 (Soxhlet n-hexane, ISO 12966-2/-4 GC-FID) and supplementary Table S1 ('The oil content and fatty acid composition of apple cultivars', 75 rows), read from 'Table S1.pdf' in foods-10-01956-s001.zip as served by https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/PMC8392653/supplementaryFiles

PlantFAdb, Michigan State University (fatplants.net); Ohlrogge et al. 2018, The Plant Journal 96:1299-1308, based on the SOFA database of the Max Rubner-Institut — PlantFAdb datasets for Malus pumila (plant 16512): #14495, #14496, #14497, 'Seed oils of apples (Malus pumila)' (1971), SOFA TAB_009612-TAB_009614 · document dated 1971 · read 2026-09-24

Iodine values (Wijs) 127.0, 122.0, 121.0 for Granny Smith, Sturmer and Dougherty; fatty acids quoted in notes.

Fatty acids are supplementary Table S1 of Fotiric Aksic et al. 2021 (Foods 10(8):1956, open access): seeds of 75 apple cultivars (mostly traditional Norwegian ones) from a single collection orchard in western Norway (Hjeltnes, Hardanger; 2017 and 2018 harvests), oil Soxhlet-extracted with n-hexane, FAMEs by ISO 12966-2/-4, GC-FID on a 100 m CP-Sil 88 column. Min/max are the lowest and highest of the 75 cultivars: palmitic 5.68-9.73, palmitoleic <0.01-0.17, stearic 1.27-2.22, oleic 21.76-35.22, linoleic 50.04-66.73, alpha-linolenic <0.01-0.87, arachidic 0.96-1.48, 11-eicosenoic 0.27-0.90, behenic 0.19-0.40, lignoceric <0.01-0.21 %; '<0.01' is stored as a minimum of 0. Acids with no key reach at most: heptadecanoic 0.16, cis-10-heptadecenoic 0.11, eicosadienoic 0.25, arachidonic 0.27, heneicosanoic 0.37 and docosahexaenoic 0.74 % (the last two are unusual in a seed oil and are the paper's identifications). Every cultivar's row sums to 99.86-100.30 %; oil content 7.73-22.10 % of the seed. The table was read from 'Table S1.pdf' in the supplementary archive (foods-10-01956-s001.zip) that Europe PMC serves for this article, with each value assigned to its column by printed position because the PDF's text layer runs the columns together; the assignment was checked against the rendered pages. The paper's main text summarises the same data inconsistently (linoleic '59.37-67.94 %' in one place, 'from 50 % to 66 %' in another); the table is used. IODINE VALUE: PlantFAdb datasets #14495-#14497, 'Seed oils of apples (Malus pumila)' (1971), New Zealand cultivars Granny Smith 127.0, Sturmer 122.0 and Dougherty 121.0 g I2/100 g (Wijs), with compositions close to the Norwegian range (palmitic 4.8-7.0, oleic 24.4-34.6, linoleic 56.1-64.1 %). SAPONIFICATION VALUE is null: none of these documents prints one; the band midpoints imply about 192 mg KOH/g. FOR SOAP: a mid-to-high linoleic oil (50-67 %) with a quarter to a third oleic - soft, conditioning, moderate shelf life; a superfat or small-percentage oil. INCI name, CAS and EC numbers are CosIng's (CosIng still names apple Pyrus malus).

This record is part of the open ingredient database (ODbL). Found an error or a better primary source? The dataset is on GitHub; corrections with a document link are welcome.