The basic ingredients of an incense stick are bamboo sticks, paste, and the perfume ingredients â which traditionally would be a masala (powder of ground ingredients), though more commonly is a solvent of perfumes and/or essential oils. After the base paste has been applied to the bamboo stick, it is either, in the traditional method, while still moist, immediately rolled into the masala, or, more commonly, left for several days to dry, and then dipped into the scented solvent.