Mooncake

This is a sweet, gourmand-leaning scent that is cozy and very wearable, especially for autumn or winter. I can imagine wearing this for a coffee run with a nice chunky sweater on. In the initial spray, it was very honey-forward, which has settled a little but still remains sweet. There is a light, tangy mustiness from the bean paste and/or pastry notes that also serves as the backbone of this fragrance. I would argue that this could even translate as a little hay-like too. There is also a subtle salty, egg yolk quality, but it’s just enough to add some complexity. You really only notice it if you are looking for it. I think this prevents the fragrance from becoming sickeningly sweet and cloying. I really enjoy this. I’ve only had a couple mooncakes in my life, but it feels pretty realistic and I could see myself reaching for it often. Rewear notes: second time putting this on, I still enjoyed it. However, it definitely had a more musty/dusty/tangy quality reminiscent of the bean and pastry. I put this on and judged it as a random scent, forgetting for a moment it’s a scent of a specific food item. For people in western countries who haven’t had many mooncakes and aren’t familiar with some of the ingredients, they will probably not grasp the gourmand quality of this and will probably read it as old or dusty as I stated above. I still really enjoy this, but in a western setting, I could understand if people would be perplexed by it. I think as a result, it makes it slightly harder to reach for, but at the same time, I personally don’t care and enjoy it regardless. So yummy and comforting!

Beautiful. I wish it had been a bit more daring with the mung bean and the egg yolk coating to reflect the density and chewiness of mooncakes. It's a 'nondescript bakery' aroma straight from my teenage job working early mornings in a bagel shop. It captures that sweet, yeasty, honey way my skin would stay well into the evenings. A pleasant lingering bakery cloud. There's more than just the listed notes as something makes it pull nutty/cinnamon-y throughout the day, especially outside in the heat of the sun. One of the reviews below says it's the lotus that makes it come off nutty, is that true? Super cool if so, I had no idea lotus could be so grounding and earthy/rich. It's either that or the 'syrup' accord has cinnamon. Can't help but feel that ramping up the mung bean would have made this an absolute work of art, but it's perfectly inoffensive, kind, and dreamy as it is now. This is not a BBW sugarbomb cupcakey gourmand (and not knocking that, just, you know, a different vibe entirely) and despite being sweet from top to bottom, won't actively rot your teeth. Love that it has enough earthiness, I just wanted even more.

I lived in Japan for a few years and I still recall my first experience in a Japanese bakery. Inside the glass display case were any number of beautiful offerings and to my American mind, this was sure to be a cake lovers dream. However, once you bit into one of these confections you quickly understood that the Japanese version of "sweets" was quite different than ours. In fact, these much less sweeter treats, I soon came to learn, tasted much better based on the flavors of say cream or fruit rather than simply relying on sugar. And so it is with Mooncake. To read the ingredients....egg yolk, mung bean, lotus seed....is to question how this might possibly smell good. And yet - here I find a beautiful scent. Decadent and savory yet mellow, creamy and smooth. For me this is a honeyed golden cake filled with a delicate vanilla custard. The composition is gourmand without playing into gourmand tropes - not heavy, not overly sweet, not based on familiar foody notes. This perfume is delicious and totally unexpected.

I love a weird gourmand. This brand was on my radar, and this was the first I chose to blind buy a 9ml decant from ScentSplit. I can't resist honey, and I'm excited to smell notes I've never heard of! I also have no experience with a real mooncake. Sure, there are parts of this that are STRANGE. It's not eggy or salty- but it's doughy! Quick sour at first, within 30 seconds it mellows- without losing unique-ness. Now 8 hours later, I have a pleasant unique vanilla marzipan chalky sweet perfume smell (not food). AND... I used my ScentSplit decant discount code for a full bottle. It's really good, and I want to cover myself in it. It's not a honey scent to me. That might be the powdery-ness that reads almond powder/paste to me. I can't define it, I just know it's really really good. I tried to talk myself out of it. I have ENOUGH cakey perfumes... but in the end I don't have any like this!

I am primarily a foodie gourmond lover. But this one did not scream edible food to me, and yet has become one of the most beautiful perfumes I have ever smelled. It does not smell like a perfume, but like my skin in a clean naturally beautiful state. I never understood the hype around "skin scent" which often smelled gross or sour on me until I tried this, perhaps the most compatible perfume I have ever tried on my skin. Soft powdery honey that's not animalic, a whisper of custardy vanilla, and something green and natural, likely the mung bean and lotus seed that perfects the scent profile. Even though I listed the different facets, I feel like I still can't quite describe how ethereal this smells to me. PS I do not get anything super eggy, and no salt! I hate salt in perfume and was glad not to detect it in this one.

Mooncake by D'annam is simply a honey, slightly nutty gourmand fragrance done extremely well. I'm not normally one to enjoy honey fragrances, I actually stay away from the note quite a lot. But when trying this along with the rest of the new line in store - this came off as a really airy honey actually smelling like a super fluffy cake that when cut open has a honey aroma that comes flying out. I was really pleasantly surprised with this release and it was the only one of the new line that I purchased on the spot. Would highly recommend if you want a honey-headed gourmand that doesn't feel like too much or is too sickly.

Mooncake opens with a strong sweet honey. It is quickly grounded with a line of savory notes (I can't pick out which) creating a perfect balance. It is so unique to other honey/vanilla fragrances. It's a sweet gourmand, but not the cupcake you expect because of these perfectly blended savory aspects. d'Annam has created another masterpiece! The stories are made vivid with the scents to uncanny detail. (sometimes unwearable detail - I'm looking at you Pho Breakfast) :-) I can't wait for the rest of the Chinese storyline.

absolutely lovely! it feels like warm honey with a nutty earthy vibe. opens soft n syrupy, a bit of vanilla in there too. sweet but not heavy, kinda grounded by the mung bean + lotus seed. the mung bean leans dry/woody earthy, lotus is just lightly nutty in the back. the salted egg yolk note is funny, doesn’t smell like eggs at all lol... more like a powdery custard w a salty edge. overall a cozy honeyed gourmand, sweet but balanced.

Now THIS is a scent w a honey note. Honey is one of my favorite notes so I've tried at least 10 different frags that have it. This has gotta be in the top 2. It is such a delectable savory and sweet gourmand: ambery sweet and starchy savory in a pas de deaux. They each have moments of prominence, neither is overpowering. I love when perfumers are just great at their job. It's invigorating.

This was my second full bottle buy from d'Annam after Kimono. I love love love that this is a non-vanilla gourmond. No vanilla. No caramel. No cinnamon or spice. Its gooey, yummy, warm, enveloping and sweet. Like climbing inside a mooncake for a much needed nap. When not worn on its own I layer it with White Rice for a little complexity. So happy with the purchase.

A real winner: the sweet honey note is quite subtle and not cloying at all. You can really taste the moon cake, even the salty egg yolk in the background, which is very mild. While the description might make you raise an eyebrow, you should give it a try. For me, it’s a 10/10, even though I usually hate gourmand fragrances.

Never had mooncake. Not big on pastry-like gourmands. Really trying to get away from D'annam. Yet out of all the fragrances I tried during my trip to Arielle Shoshana, this was one of the three I walked away with. As I wear it now, I want to eat my skin. In all honesty, I actually took a lick. Lick was mid, scent is peak.

Deceptively powdery open that blossoms into a richer, almost savory sweetness. A meaty scent, like biting into honeycomb. Not just a synthetic syrup made for coffee. Full bodied like a pear shaped woman, and just as sensual. My go-to is strawberry mochi but this is a strong contender.

i bought the discovery set just for this fragrance. i sprayed it on the tester strip & immediately got hit by a warm honey scent, it's the most prominent note for me. it smells like the pure honey my grandpa gives me whenever he visits. sweet & very comforting

Hyperrealistic mooncake scent at first- mung bean, salted egg yolk, the warm smell of the pastry!! But like most D'annam gourmands dries down into powdery, floral vanilla. I do like it, but the nostalgic mooncake smell doesn't last long.

you walk into a buddhist temple during mid-autumn festival day and there at a shrine there's a sweet woodsy incense stick burning slowly away and right before you is a stack of fresh golden mooncakes.

Ever smelt a newborn baby’s head? Well this is exactly what that smells like. It’s sweet, a little toasty, and just comforting overall. Another beautiful fragrance from this house.

yummy...... sweet egg honey custard.... want to gnaw the bottle like a jawbreaker.....

Smells like a fancy gourmand candle (in a good way) and feels warm and cozy

Smells like a rich egg custard/creme brûlée.

What a unique vanilla scent! Super lovely!

an array of homework is laid out upon a glass table, yellow living room lights beaming down at my puzzled expression. i could only sit there and ruminate in my confusion, awaiting for some strange force to avert my attention. thankfully, that strange force would come in the form of a polite knocking at our door. my father brings in a fancy looking package from the inky abyss that is an evening winter. without fail, our neighbors would come by to give us some mooncakes during the lunar new year season. i always enjoyed gnawing on those treats ( especially when i wasn't particularly enthused with my homework. ) mooncakes will always be a symbol of innocence to me. truthfully, i don't find this to be a bad fragrance by any means. it opens as a rich gourmand, the syrupy quality is quite nostalgic for me. there is also a distinct vegetal scent that is no doubt the mung bean note coming into play. ( which almost makes it smell like a cologne of sorts! ) however, the salted egg-yolk is virtually nonexistent, a note that i was quite curious to actually smell. :-( after the dry-down, it leans into the vanilla & honey notes. unfortunately, this is far from a photorealistic mooncake smell as someone who has been eating them from a young age. while this perfume does hold the components, it seems rather inspired instead of being a direct match. i recommend this perfume to those who are fans of the extremely sweet! personally, it is a nice scent, but it is far too sweet to become apart of my signature scent rotation. i am far from offended, but not completely head-over-heels. yet, i still like this!

Definitely a gourmand—smells edible. But this is not creamy or milky. I get lots of sweetness from honey. I was hoping to get more of mung bean and lotus seeds. I can’t tell if there’s salted egg yolk, which I wanted to detect at least a teeny bit. It is sweeter than I normally prefer. But the perfume seems like a realistic interpretation of Mooncake. It is very well done. It’s dense. It’s very pleasant. I am so happy I don’t get any plasticky smell. I think this will layer pretty well with Vietnamese Coffee from the same house. Update: 10/04/2025 I wore this a couple of times more. And I get a lot more complexity than just sweet honey-syrup treat. My partner really likes it, saying there’s a lot going on. I am guessing the lotus seeds, mung bean and salted egg yolk is making this not too linear. It’s really well made. I am between like and love. This is nothing like strawberry mochi—not even remotely.

Second sampling of d’Annam Chapter 3: Majestic China, Mooncake, seemingly inspired by a savory-sweet pastry that I’m not intimately familiar with, but notes of honey, vanilla, salted egg yolk, mung bean, lotus seed, and golden syrup, the last three of which I’m not familiar with, either. My experience of it is a moderately sweet pastry with some salty and savory aspects, vaguely, midway between light and heavy. It’s pleasant but not striking, and not immediately evocative for me, personally, and it performs pretty well but is not among the strongest of the house that I’ve tried so far. I find it fascinating, though, and I get different wafts as I continue to smell it on skin. As with most of the line, concentration is EDP and pricing $160 for 50ml, sold in the US via the house website and great boutiques like Perfumology. 7 out of 10

The opening of this scent is really winning - it’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s unique and almost bready. It feels like a true mooncake vibe. However, on me, the interest evolves into a generic and overly sweet scent in about 30-45 minutes. At that point, I would say it’s just “okay” and I don’t feel the need to wear it again. The true, faint drydown after about 4 hours is very nice. I wouldn’t mind always smelling like this - a toned down version of the opening - but the strongest couple of hours are a little too overpowering in a cloying and uninteresting way to eventually get to this skin scent-level pleasantness. (Busted out my decant for the first time this lunar new year and it was great for the occasion).

I want to start by saying that I usually don’t like sweet scents, anything sweet or vanilla is not my thing. BUT I bought the discovery set and surprisingly this is Top3 from Majestic China for me. It is a scent I would actually wear. Very obviously it’s an autumn fragrance. I can smell the beans and the syrup from the opening but it doesn’t disgust me like sweet fragrances usually do. After a few minutes I started to smell the egg yolk in the best way possible. That said, it is still a Top3 for me, behind Pomelo oolong and Princess of China, but for me this takes a lot of credit, making me like a sweet fragrance. I will be doing a wear test in the next few days so this might change.

Oh! I am surprised by how much I like this! Oh paper it just smells like a buttery caramel popcorn. On skin, however, it blooms so gorgeously. My husband is Chinese, and for the moon festival he orders a more “westernized” and sweeter moon cake. This smells like that, not like the traditional mooncake. He eats a lot of salted eggs yolks. Once the perfume has sat on skin for a few minutes, I go get the salted egg yoke note quite distinctly. This is smells cakey, gooey, savory, sweet, and salty. Just so much fun! It’s not a DNA I typically wear, but I’m so pleased that this exists and that I got a sample of it in the discovery kit. A truly unique gourmand.

I'm not the biggest fan of honey scents, so I probably won't buy the full size myself. BUT if that's your thing, this perfume is amazing! It smells like REAL, natural honey, organic, not overly sweet or synthetic. (I think the hint of urine that some people notice comes from that.) When I first apply it, the honey is the main note, but as it settles, the salty nuance of egg yolk comes through, which is really pleasant. The lotus seeds and mung bean add a soft, slightly powdery touch. In the end, I think it’s a nice fragrance for people who like gourmand scents but want something more natural, not too sweet or syrupy.

A very sweet and honey-dominated scent, that really slightly resembles the moon cake dough. I don't get the salted egg yolk, nor do I get mung bean filling, it really is more the dough that wraps the filling and which is really dominated by honey and syrup. The first whiffs do really make me feel like unwrapping a moon cake, but as I said the other notes are lacking. I wish it would have a bit more complexity, but other than that it's well done and the longevity is surprisingly good for a D'Annam scent. It already lasts for 10 hours on my skin.

I was initially kind of put off by this one, thinking it smelled cheap like a Bath & Body Works scent, like Warm Brown Sugar. But after wearing it a couple more times, its grown on me! I have begun to wear it on rainy days this spring. Its a deliciously cozy scent, sweet and honeyed. I have never had a mooncake so I don't know about how accurate that part is, but it's more complex and earthy as it dries down. Another snuggly treat from D'Annam!

This is quite true to it's inspiration! The honey to me has a clover-ish quality that keeps it from smelling too sweet to my nose. I also notice the salted egg yolk quite prominently. It lasts quite well; I could smell it on myself without looking for it for my whole work day. While I'm not generally a gourmand lover, this is very pleasant and it really makes me want a moon cake. Thankfully it's the right time of year!

literally smells like you drenched yourself in honey. first spray, that's legitimately all i can smell; once it sits on the skin for awhile, though, you do get the faint salty egg note, which mellows out the sweetness and makes it less cloying. so beautiful to wear on a cold day, it just makes you feel warm lol

Delicious :) very sweet, but not too much, it's not nauseating or cloying. The honey and syrup are realistic, it feels like I'm near a dessert, the salted yolk balances out the sweetness. I've never had a mooncake, and I don't know what they smell or taste like, but this makes me want to try it

This is interesting. These are some notes I'm not used to smelling so I'm having a hard time describing how I feel about it. I definitely smell the honey when I first spray it. It's like powdery honey, and red bean paste almost. Then when it dries it’s like a savory dessert! I like it. 7.5/10

it's definitely very sweet, but not very distinguishably sweet. Also not too cloying. Maybe honey? Definitely a golden sweetness if you catch my drift. Also to me it gives the vibe of lotus paste cause to me lotus paste doesn't really taste like anything except sweetness anyway

intense, sweet, syrupy start that turns veeeery salty after two or three minutes on my skin. mixes together to create a full picture later on. bit of a weird one, but i keep being drawn to the salty egg note? seriously sticks in my nose

really sweet and salty gourmand, like honey sprinkled in salt. unfortunately I didn't feel the nuttiness in this, just the pure drizzly honey and the salt, I really loved it nonetheless! cozy fragrance for autumn rainy days.

This smells like Greek baklava. The scent stays close to the skin as well. It’s really nice and I can see why people are comparing it to strawberry mochi but tbh it doesn’t smell the same.

thick syrup (not maple) honey note with some powder. I wish I’ve had a moon cake before so I can truly compare. I think the idea of this perfume is very special.

starts as a mooncake, but sticks around like a stale baklava. the honey and vanilla survive, the egg sticks to your clothes crazy long!

Ngl I have no idea how they got the salted egg yolk flavor in there but it's definitely there haha, a sweet, salted egg tart

sweet with a calming dry down. usually im not a fan of honey but this did it for me

Best fall gourmand, sweet but not too sweet, id say pretty realistic too

Fairly photorealistic, super good I wanna eat my skin 10/10

Okay scent, but does not work well on my skin - the mung bean seems to take the lead with my PH, and it gives a powdery veggie opening I do not fancy. There is more honey than vanilla that follows, which is well-done (honey seems to be a note often claimed, but not stand-out or photorealistic like this perfume), but I can't get past the powdery bean greens personally. I don't dislike it overall, but I would not wear it.

I enjoyed the opening because it shares the same savory dna as White Rice and Strawberry Mochi. However the honey quickly takes over and becomes too much for me. It almost smells powdery or floral to me? I don't know what it is, but it was verging on giving me a headache so I washed it off. I'm sad that I haven't loved either of the new China fragrances, hoping the rest of the collection has something for me.

Sadly, this one was far too sweet for me. It smells less like a nostalgic dessert and more like a fake golden syrup trying very hard to convince you it’s something artisanal. There’s a thick, almost sticky sweetness that never really settles, and instead of feeling warm and comforting, it becomes cloying quite quickly. I get the idea, but on my skin it just doesn’t feel authentic or balanced.

It is just, sweet. I wish I could smell the mung bean or salted egg yolk, which would add so much more depth and much needed savoriness, but it fell just flat sweet on me. Would work as a layering device the same as BORNTOSTANDOUT Sugar Addict, but otherwise, can't stand on its own. I feel like I need to shake my head. If they ever make a Zongzi fragrance, I expect better.

such an evolving perfume! the amazing sweetness took about 10-15 minutes to fully develop into a beautiful gourmand. the honey is not overpowering for me at all, infact i cant even smell it in the drydown. with every realease from d'annam im more amazed by the realism of these scents, it really teleports you into the scene and i love this house for its craft

Seems like a perfume for kids. Overwhelming sweetness, lack of complexity, a strong feel of synthetics, and also a feeling of sameness to so many other similar gourmands on the market. I don’t feel there’s much to recommend this other than the pleasant and long lasting vanillic drydown, and the name, which is charming.