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SOME EDITORIAL NOTES
Last week we were off for surprise medical matters. This week let us return to our significantly more disastrous run-ins with historical recreations.
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SOAP: FIT THE EIGHTH (AN EVENING OF TRAGEDIES)
There came an evening, in April of 2023, when I decided that perhaps the Real Problem with my soap experiments was that I wasn’t working from the known to the unknown– that is to say, I wasn’t making a Working version first and then extrapolating from there. (You could THEORETICALLY also say that perhaps I wanted to check and see if I was just rubbish at making soap, BUT YOU’LL NEVER PROVE IT, COPPERS.)
Which led to…
10:46 PM, April 13, 2023
live from the workshop
I am staring down at the contents of my mortar and pestle
and I fear I have made a terrible mistake
10:49 PM
it’s beautiful!
it won’t solidify
10:52 PM
I FOUND SOME SALT
…it’s from the anti-vampire bottle bombs, but whatever, it’s fine
10:56 PM
look at this beautiful bastard
Figure 1. Marshmallowy madness.
11:04 PM
Salt was used to vaguely solidify European soap (the stuff made with potash instead of soda ash). But how much did they use? How solid did that soap actually get?
…I don’t want to add arrowroot, but
*stares at clock*
*stares at mortar*
*stares at depths of soul, considers life, considers choices*
11:15 PM
My god.
The salt I have is coarse sea salt (listen, it’s big and visible and freaks out the undead, we all know this, keep up), which I was putting in whole–
Tut a second ago I decided to maybe grind it up smaller in one of my other mortars (yes I have multiple now, we are doing important nonsense here)–
And when I added the finer salt–
Figure 2. This absolute monster finally started solidifying.
12:02 AM, April 14, 2023
BEHOLD: these fancy as fuck, sweet as hell wash-balls of neroly, from the 1696 English translation of Simon Barbe’s The French Perfumer
Figure 3. Look at them. Look.
And here’s the thing: The fact that all the previous historical recipes recreated so far have smelled like delicious cookies has made me doubt every “ahahaha oh they were so smelly in the past” bullshit modern narrative.
I thought, finally, this would be the recipe that bucked the trend.
And I was half right, because the Wash-balls of Neroly don’t smell like cookies…
…They smell like a goddamn field of fucking flowers.
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BECOME YOUR OWN HISTORICALLY QUESTIONABLE APOTHECARY!
See the latest from our Plimoth Patuxet range of unlabeled museum props!
Cut out your favorite gallypot, not-gallypot, porriger, mortar & pestle set, ceramic alembic, or questionably sized linen covering and send 25¢ to the Editors' Shop at the ſigne of the Globe, ouer againſt the Royall Exchange, in the year 1627, S&H separate, allowing four centuries for delivery-- and enjoy your new historically unclear home apothecary items soon SOON SOON!
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
I realized that I was preparing to speak, at length, on the topic of gallypots– and I’m still going to! Ha HA!
–But I am also very sleepy, and extremely itchy, and I’m supposed to be doing something called “healing”, and so I must stop. Apparently.
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Alternately, commenting on this post will get you a similar result, with much less fuss.
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-Until next time, be safe.
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Katherine Crighton 