The Soxhlet extractor is a classic piece of chemical apparatus1,2that is used to extract sparingly soluble material from a solidsample. Several experiments based on this concept have beenpublished in this Journal, including the isolation of caffeine frombeverage plants3 and piperine from black pepper.4 Soxhletextractors are intricate pieces of glassware, making them bothfragile and relatively expensive. The cost of such equipment canbe restrictive, especially for schools and universities with limitedbudgets.5 In this paper we describe the construction of aSoxhlet extractor from readily available equipment anddemonstrate its use in the extraction of trimyristin fromnutmeg.