Behind the Scenes of Beds, Baths & Beyond #4

Skin Care and Cosmetics

Should a reader be interested in reproducing these pre-1860 concoctions, please exercise caution, and substitute any toxic ingredients with safer equivalents.

The New Family Receipt-Book, printed in 1811, London, by Squire & Warwick, price seven shillings and sixpence was printed several years running with updates and additions, until at least 1837. The information was copied and used in many publications.

Receipt; recipe, receipt meaning a record of an amount, not necessarily money.

Lip Salve: Take 1 ounce of white wax and ox marrow, 3 ounces of white pomatum, and melt all in a bath heat; add a drachm of alkanet, and stir it till it acquire a reddish colour. 

White wax; bleached beeswax.

Pomatum; an old word for pomade, the primary ingredient bear fat.

Pommade; a French and older spelling of pomade, a greasy waxy substance for the hair, lips, eyelids, &c, (but in modern usage it is for the hair, as other words have come into use), with the primary ingredient bear fat, but including beeswax, lard, petroleum jelly, &c, and scented with essential oils.

Drachm; (a dram) 1 eighth of an ounce in solid or liquid measure, equal to a teaspoon in the old apothecaries’ system of measurement.

Alkanet; or dyer’s bugloss (Alkanna tictoria) is a plant of the borage family, the roots of which are used to produce red dye.