Cédrat Wellbeing Fragrant Water Gift Set

As presents go, the Roger and Gallet Cédrat Wellbeing Fragrant Water Gift Set is one of the safer things you can hand over, because a clean lemon scent is about as close to universally liked as fragrance gets.

The set pairs a 30ml perfumed water with a 100g soap. The composition is short. Lemon leads, rindy and bright rather than sugary, cardamom sits behind it with a cool green aromatic quality, and guaiac wood closes the whole thing off, dry and a little smoky, which gives the citrus something solid to rest on as it fades. Three materials and no more, which means there is nothing in it to divide opinion and no stage of the wear that anyone is likely to object to.

A fragrant water is lighter than an eau de toilette, and that is rather the point of it. It is designed to be used in quantity, splashed or sprayed over the arms, the shoulders and the neck after a bath, and to last an hour or two rather than a whole day at a time. People who find perfume overbearing tend to get on with this format very well indeed, and it is forgiving if the recipient has never bought a fragrance.

Presented as a set, it is suited to a thank you, a birthday, or the kind of gift that has to be pleasant rather than personal. It works for men and for women, it is particularly welcome in summer, and it demands nothing of whoever receives it beyond a tolerance for lemon. Karine Dubreuil and Mathilde Bijaoui are named as its perfumers.

Roger and Gallet has made perfume and soap in Paris since 1862, the year a pair of relatives by marriage bought a house that had been trading since 1806. In 1879 it introduced the first soap scented right through rather than merely on the outside, and it has sold body and bath products since the 1950s.