Broccoli Seed Oil
Also: Brassica oleracea italica seed oil, Brassica oleracea seed oil.
Published values
| Saponification value | 168–190 mg KOH/g |
| Used by the calculator | 179.0 mg KOH/g (midpoint) |
| SAP for NaOH | 0.1276 g/g |
| Iodine value | 86–120 g I₂/100 g |
| INS (SAP − IV) | 76 |
| Melting point | — |
| Unsaponifiable matter | — |
A bar made of 100 % Broccoli Seed Oil
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 | 6.8 | 6.8 |
| Stearic acid | C18:0 · saturated | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Oleic acid | C18:1 | 15.1 | 15.1 |
| Linoleic acid | C18:2 | 16.1 | 16.1 |
| α-Linolenic acid | C18:3 n-3 | 20.06 | 20.1 |
| Erucic acid | C22:1 | 30–50 (typ. 33.1) | 33.1 |
Where these numbers come from
Table 1 fatty-acid composition of a commercial cold-pressed broccoli seed oil, with saturated and unsaturated totals. No saponification or iodine value measured; no C20:1 reported.
Producer's specification sheet. Saponification value 168-190 mg KOH/g, iodine value 86.0-120.0, acid value < 3.0, peroxide < 20 meq O2/kg, SG 0.907-0.919, RI 1.461-1.475 at 20 C; fatty acids palmitic < 5.5, stearic < 6.5, oleic < 40.5, linoleic < 20.0, linolenic < 10.0, eicosenoic < 13.0, erucic 30.0-50.0, nervonic < 2.0 %. No revision date is printed on the sheet; the year is taken from the publisher's file name. Source of the sapKohMgPerG and iodineValue fields and of the erucic min/max.
ERUCIC ACID is the point of this oil and also why it behaves oddly in soap. C22:1 is a very long-chain monounsaturate, so a broccoli-heavy recipe traces slowly, stays soft through a long cure and gives a low, slippery lather - closer to high-erucic rapeseed than to any nut or seed oil a maker is used to. It is also why the saponification value is so low: a C22 chain means fewer moles of fat per gram, so this oil eats noticeably less lye per gram than the C16/C18 oils beside it in the same recipe. The measured profile is Table 1 of Fratianni et al. 2023 (Front. Nutr. 10:1171766, open access), a commercial cold-pressed broccoli seed oil bought on the Italian market: palmitic 6.8 +/- 0.7, stearic 0.2 +/- 0.1, oleic 15.1 +/- 0.8, linoleic 16.1 +/- 1.0, linolenic 20.06 +/- 0.9, erucic 33.1 +/- 1.2 %, with the paper's own totals 7.0 % saturated and 84.3 % unsaturated. Those six acids sum to 91.4 %, and the missing 8.6 % is this record's weak spot: the paper reports no C20:1 at all, which is not credible for a Brassica seed oil - eicosenoic acid runs into double figures wherever erucic is high, and the trade specification below allows up to 13 %. Nervonic acid (C24:1, up to 2 % in the same specification) has no key in this schema either. Both are left out rather than invented, so the stored profile is deliberately short of 100 % and the calculator will not offer a derived saponification value from it - which is the right outcome here, because a published band exists. ON THE ERUCIC NUMBER: 30-50 % is the band in the NHR Organic Oils specification and the single measured figure, 33.1 %, sits at the bottom of it. Broader work on the genus puts Brassica oleracea seed near 46 % erucic ('Oil Content and Fatty Acids Composition in Brassica Species', Int. J. Food Properties 2015, 18(10), doi 10.1080/10942912.2014.968284 - abstract only, the full text was behind a paywall), and cold-pressed kale seed oil, the same species as var. acephala, is reported above 50 %; neither full text was reachable here, so neither is cited as a source, but both say the same thing - 33 % is more likely a low lot or a var. italica trait than a ceiling. If the erucic content matters for what you are making, buy against a certificate of analysis rather than against this range. SAPONIFICATION AND IODINE come from that same producer specification - NHR Organic Oils (Brighton, UK), 'Product Specification Organic Broccoli Seed Oil (Brassica oleracea italica)', cold pressed: saponification value 168-190 mg KOH/g, iodine value 86.0-120.0 g I2/100 g, acid value < 3.0 mg KOH/g, peroxide < 20 meq O2/kg, specific gravity 0.907-0.919 and refractive index 1.461-1.475 at 20 C. No Codex standard, pharmacopoeial monograph or journal paper found in this search publishes either value for broccoli seed oil. The centre of that band, 179 mg KOH/g, agrees with the recorded composition to better than 1 % by stoichiometry, which is reassuring for a supplier figure. Unsaponifiable matter and melting point: not published in any document checked, left null. INCI not verified against CosIng in this session, so left null.
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.