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| Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife, or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion, 1727 |
The recipe
AQUA-MELLIS, OR THE KING'S HONEYWATER.
Take twenty-eight pounds of coriander seeds, ground
small in the starch-mill; twenty-eight common bunches of sweet marjoram, in
flower, dried and stripped from the twigs, one pound of calamus aromaticus, one
pound of yellow saunders, and one pound of orange and lemon peel. Let the three
last mentioned substances be separately beaten into gross powder.
Mix the above ingredients, and put them into a
sixty-gallon copper-still, and add to them twenty gallons of proof spirits, and
the same quantity of rain or spring water.Lute well all
the junctures of the apparatus, and leave the ingredients in this state,
without fire, for forty-eight hours. At the end of this time, begin to distil
by a very gentle heat, lest the flowers and seeds, which are very light, should
rise suddenly in the still-head, stop up the worm, and endanger the whole work.
Increase the fire after the first half hour, and keep
it regular, thereafter, till the termination of the process.
Draw off about twenty-six or twentyseven gallons, or
continue so long as the spirit will burn, by the application of a lighted paper
to a small quantity of it in a saucer.
Next day, when the still is perfectly cold, let it be
well cleaned out, saving the remaining ingredients for further uses, as will be
after directed.
Now return the spirits drawn off yesterday into the
still, and add thereto ten or twelve gallons of water. Then put in the
following nine ingredients, bruised andmixed as directed.
These are to remain in the liquor, in a cold state, for forty-eight hours;
attention being still paid to luting and stopping close, as before.
At the end of this time, kindle the fire,
and work off (slowly at first) as before, until twenty-six gallons are
distilled. Mix all the different runnings together in a copper vessel, kept for
this purpose only; and, as for what may come over after the twentysix gallons,
it must be kept, and added to the ingredients used for the making of the next
quantity of Hungary water.
The nine ingredients alluded to above, are as follows
:—
Fourteen ounces of nutmegs, Four ounces
of cloves, Twelve ounces of cinnamon bark, Eight ounces of pimento, and Forty
ounces of cassia lignum. These are to be separately broken or bruised in an
iron mortar, until they are about the size of small peas. If there be any dust,
it must be sifted from them before they are used.
When the above are broken, take Forty ounces of
storax, Forty ounces of gum benjamin, Forty ounces of labdanum, and Forty
venellios, by tale. Break and bruise the above also, but make as little dust as
possible. Put the dust from these and the foregoing, together, into a coarse
muslin bag, which is to be hung in the still, so that the liquor, during
distillation, may extract all its virtues.
Having drawn off, in this second distillation, just
twenty-six gallons, add to it, in a copper vessel, that will hold forty
gallons, six gallons of orange flower-water, and eight gallons of rose-water,
which has been recently made.
Now mix together ten ounces of spirit of musk, ten
ounces of spirit of ambergris, half an ounce of true oil of lavender, half an
ounce of good essence of bergamot, and half an ounce of oil of rhodium.
When properly mixed, put all these into the copper
vessel, and stir the whole well together. It would be better, however, if
these strong perfumes were put in before the
orange-flower and rose waters.
Add to all these a quart of milk, which has stood for
a night, and which has had all the cream taken clearly off:, then agitate and
mix the whole well together, and stop the vessel up close, until the time when
it is to be used.
Remarks.
The jar ought to have a lock-cock soldered into it, to
prevent accidents. This should be placed fully two inches from the bottom, in
order that the milk, and other impurities, may fall to the bottom, and not flow
through into the vessels in which it is drawn off for use.
If this honey-water be made in the
spring, about March or April, and if the weather be fair, it will be quite
fined down in the course of a month; that is, if it be not opened or disturbed.
When the perfumer finds, by drawing off a little in a glass, that the milk,
&c. have fallen down to the bottom, he may draw the whole off into clean
andwell-seasoned stone, or glass, bottles; or much rather
into another copper jar.
This composition ought never to be drawn off in rainy
or cloudy weather; for then the milk is apt to rise. In warm weather it should
be kept cool; and, in winter, as warm as possible. When distilled in the
winter, the jars ought to be warmed, otherwise the honey-water will not be
fined for five or six months.
If the honey-water be twenty years old,
so much the better.
The ingredients from the first distillation should be
immediately dried in the sun, otherwise they will become mouldy. When there is
a considerable quantity from three or four makings, it ought to be ground in a
mill, and finely sifted. They will be found to be of great use in the making of
ordinary brown wash-balls,- and, with some additions, of brown
powders for the hair.
The ingredients from the second distillation are of
much greater value than the above, and therefore require more care in the
drying. These are of great use for the best sort of gross
powders, for sweet bags, &c.; and, if made into a fine powder, may
be made use of, with great success, in the best sort of brown perfumed
balls.
The same powder, with fresh ingredients, makes
excellent pastils, to burn; and may be further used in making spirit of
benjamin. For all these uses, it is necessary to attend to the receipts which
will hereafter be given./ The British Perfumer
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| Source |
Breaking down the recipe
Ingredients that
have been described in earlier posts can be found in the ingredients list on
the top of the page.
First stage
Coriander seeds An
herb, with a citrusy flavor. Very common in Indian cuisine.
Marjoram An herb
with a citrus and pine flavor.
Calamus Aromaticus
Yellow sandalwood
Aromatic tree. A common ingredient in scents
Orange and Lemon
peels The dried peels of the fruits.
There ingredients
are steeped in alcohol and water before being distilled. The remains of the
spices are saved and dried and the liquid is returned to the still.
Second stage
Add more water and
add:
Nutmeg Spice. Dried
seeds. Used in cooking, but can be poisonous in large quantities.
Clove
Cinnamon
Pimento A little
tricky, perhaps- Pimento can mean a red pepper but it can also mean Allspice, and that is what it means here. That spice is the dried
fruits of the of the Pimenta dioica plant
Cassia Sometimes
called Bastard cinnamon. Has less taste and rougher texture than true cinnamon
and is therefore cheaper.
Storax
Gum Benjamin or
Benzoin resin
Labdanum
Venellios Tonka bean,
a fragrant seed of the Tonka bean tree; used in perfumes
and medicines and as a substitute for vanilla. EDIT: After further research, Venellios is NOT Tonka bean, but an inferior quality of Vanilla. Tonka would probably work well as a substitute, though.
Let it steep again
and then distill. Once again the remains are saved and dried, but keep them
separate from the first remains.
Third stage
Add
Spirit of Musk
Animalistic scent originally derived from the glands from various animals, like
musk deer. Today synthetic musk is almost exclusively used. Probably the most
common base note in perfumes. Spirit of musk is an alcohol extract.
Spirit of Ambergris
Ambergris is a waxy substance that comes from the digestive tracks of Sperm
whales. Prepared it smells wonderful and has been used as fixative and base
note in perfume for a long time. It can be ethically harvested, but the price
is very high so usually synthetic substitutes are used. Spirit of ambergris is
an alcohol extract.
Lavender oil
Bergamot essence
Comes from Bergamot orange, which looks like a yellow orange. Used in scents
and to flavor Earl Grey tea.
Rhodium oil, or Rosewood oil
Orange flower water
A distillation of fresh bitter-orange blossoms
Rose water
Milk
Stir and leave it
to settle
Fourth stage
When the milk,
along with any impurities has settled at the bottom, decant the perfume into
suitable bottles.
The dried remains
can be used to perfume scent bags and powder.
My thoughts
There are a lot of ingredients
in the recipe and with steeping and distilling it takes several days to come to
the end of the third stage. The recipe suggests that the fourth stage will take
months. The recipe also has huge quantities, which isn’t surprising as Charles
Lillie was a perfumer by trade. I would really like to try this one, on a much
smaller scale, of course. Most of the perfume recipes I have read demand real
ambergris and musk, which would mean trying to convert it, as essence if what I
can get my hand on. This recipe, as you can see, doesn’t need any such thing.
The problem that
needs to be solved is the distillation process. Steam distillation in short,
short is boiling water, making the steam go through the scent matter, leading
the condensed liquid into another container and cool it. Hey presto, scent! I
don’t really have the room to by any fancy apparatus, but I have found some
simpler arrangements, like this one. For a smaller amount, it does seem to be
doable.
I wonder if the
perfume turns out spicy or flowery. The first batch of ingredients all have a
citrusy scent, which ought to mean that the top notes will have a lemon
quality. Then it would have spicy/resinous middle tones and muck and ambergris
as base. Sounds quite a lot like a perfume I would enjoy!
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| Alchemy satire, 18th-century artwork |
