Many essential oils are produced by the process of steam distillation. During this process valuable oxygenated components of the oil which have relatively higher solubility in water are preferentially lost in the distillate water. This loss is directly reflected in a lower yield and poor quality of the oil. Adsorption is extensively used for recovery of such valuable organics from dilute aqueous streams. This paper describes a preliminary study on the feasibility of adsorptive recovery. The following synthetic polymeric adsorbents were used in this work : Amberlite XAD-2, XAD-4 and XAD-7. Equilibrium and column exhaustion studies were carried out for the adsorption of phenyl ethyl alcohol (PEA), linalool (LL) and eugenol (EG) and also of mixtures of PEA and LL, and EG and LL from dilute aqueous solutions. The results indicate that XAD-4 is a relatively better adsorbent for all the three solutes studied.