Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

in the project Scintillating Scents: The Science of Making Perfume, I finished doing the first trial. instead of my perfume becoming a liquid it became a solid. I do not know what went wrong. I hypothesized that as the amount of vegetable shortening increases, so does the scent of the perfume. I made three individual experiments, EXPERIMENT 1: with 1 tablespoon of vegetable shortening on both sandwiches with 2 tablespoons of alcohol, EXPERIMENT 2: with 3 tablespoons of vegetable shortening on both sandwiches with 3 tablespoons of alcohol, and EXPERIMENT 3: with 6 tablespoons of vegetable shortening on both sandwiches with 6 tablespoons of alcohol. Please help me with what I did wrong. also, why did it turn into a solid? what should I do instead?

I'm not completely sure from the experimental procedure what step would necessarily involve creating a liquid. Can you describe more specifically what you expect to happen at which stage of the experiment and what is actually happening. E.g. "I expected that at step 15 my jelly jar would contain a liquid, but instead it solidified when it cooled".