Making "A Curious Perfume"

I have wanted to try this recipe for A Curious Perfume for a long time. I love perfumes and I felt very excited to finally be able to make an 18th century one.

Updated recipe

700 ml Rose Water

15 gram Benzoin resin

2 Cloves

1 gram Labdanum

1 gram Calamus root

A little Lemon peel

A few drops Storax essence

The photo is really bad, I’m sorry to say- my cell phone isn’t the best to take pictures it, but the batteries on my camera died on me.

Benzoin resin, Cloves, Calamus root, Labdanum, Lemon peel

I put the Benzoin, Cloves, Labdanum, Calamus and Lemon peel in a little fabric bag (i.e. wrapped them in a piece of old linen and sew it shut) along with the Rose water in a pan and boiled it all under a lid for 30 minutes. Then I strained it through a coffee filter. When cooled I added the Storax and poured it into a bottle.

My thoughts

The Storax in the original recipe was probably the resin, so I took a liberty in using essence. The result, not surprising, smells quite heavily of roses, but the other ingredients give the perfume a spicy, woody depth that makes it more interesting than just plain Rose water. It also has a hint of bee’s wax, which is odd as there is none in the recipe. The perfume looks a bit cloudy and there is some residue settling on the bottom of the bottle. I think a good shake is in order before use.

A word of warning though. The Benzoin and Labdanum melted into a sticky goo that is not water soluble. So even if most of it stayed in the fabric bag a residue was left in the pan and believe me, it’s hard to get rid off! So if you try this recipe, use a pan that you don’t care for…

Will I do it again?

Perhaps. It would be interesting to make it with Storax resin instead and see what happens. I also think the perfume would be better if left to boil a bit longer. As this perfume is without alcohol I think it has a limited shelf life, so if you don't plan to use a lot of it, make a small batch. However, I don’t much like wearing rose-based perfumes and this one if just a bit too much of that. If you do like the scent though, then I think you have an 18^th century winner here!

Making Another kind of rouge

The updated recipe
50 ml Red wine
1 gram Brazil wood
1 gram Alum crystal

As this recipe has no measurements whatsoever, I started out with the smallest quality possible for me. The preparations were very simple. The Brazil wood and Alum were briefly grounded in a mortle and then I boiled it with the red wine. As it was such a small quantity the wine cooked down more quickly than I had anticipated, so instead of reducing it with 1/3, it got reduced to ½.

Brazil wood

Source: kingsandy007.en.busytrade.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Making a curious Varnish for the Face

I will begin with saying that this was the most surprising of all the recipes I have tried so far as it didn’t behave at all as I thought.

The updated recipe
Brandy (cheapest brand possible) 44ml
Sandarac 2 gram
Benzoin resin 1 gram

This is something of a famous first. No need to substitute any of the ingredients and the original recipe has measurements for everything. So it was very simple to just pare it down to a suitable test sample. I grounded the resins before pouring it into the brandy. I used a small jar with a lid. After that I just shook it every time I passed it until a week had passed.

Both Sandarac and Benzoin are soluble in alcohol, but though I can’t find any information on how strong the alcohol should be for the Sandarac, Benzoin is generally recommended to be dissolved in 80% alcohol, dissolving even easier if you warm it a little. Brandy is about 40% and this recipe says nothing about warming the solution either. The Swedish pharmacopeia of 1775 recommends 50% alcohol in a ratio to 6 parts alcohol to 1 part Benzoin. Let it stand for three days and strain though a paper. (Source) A recipe with both stronger and more alcohol than the recipe I used.

Benzoin resin

Source: therapyangels.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Hair powdered revisited

I'm back after having been distracted by such trifles as pneumonia and marriage. The upcoming weekend will be spent in the 18th century and I thought it called for making this hair powder.

Updated recipe
375 g corn starch
47 g Orris root
60 ml Dolomit

Corn starch was used for hair powder in the 18th century, though at the end and mainly in USA, but today that is readily available in food stores while I have no idea where to get wheat starch. And starch is starch, so I didn’t feel bad about substituting it. Orris root was found in a store that caters herbs. The big difference is the original recipes call for calcinated and pulverized bones. It’s not something I have readily at hand, but what it is, really, is calcium. Dolomit that you buy in health stores is made out of calcium and magnesium and can be bought as a powder. As magnesium was used for white pigment in the 18th century too, I felt that this was the best substitute I could come up with.

I made a smaller batch than the original recipe, ¼ of it. The amount of Dolomit is an estimated guess for how much is 6 cuttlefish bones and a handful of bones when pulverized? Its main purpose is to whiten the powder and I would say that what shade you want is very much up to taste. I don’t think it would change the texture in any way if you added more white pigment.

Making a red lip salve

Today I tried my hand in "An excellent Lip-salve", a recipe that I discussed here. After reading up I decided to use olive oil instead of rose oil, as that is often use as base oil for just rose oil. I also made a much smaller batch, I didn't want to screw up big.

Updated recipe
Myrrh, 4 g
Honey, 15 ml
Bees wax, 8 g
Olive oil, 22 ml
Iron oxide, 4 g
Rosewood oil, 3 drops Note: A bit late it has come to my attention that Brazilian Rosewood is an endangered species, so my recommendation is to leave the salve unscented or add a few drops of another scented oil.
Edible gold powder, 2 ml (optional and used for half the batch)

I started out mixing everything apart from the pigment, Rosewood oil and the gold powder. It smelled quite nicely of honey and resin.



Mixing it together on low heat in soon became a cohesive mass that first was quite runny and then got thicker and thicker.