Alchemy and stain removal
Feb. 16th, 2006 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaA customer, in her eighties, asked about salt of sorrel. I'd never heard of it. She uses it to clean rust off her tiles.
Google said Do you mean "salt of sorrow"?
A little more research turns up that it's also called essential salt of lemon, and chemically, is binoxalate of potash, or acid potassium oxalate. I also discovered that lead acetate was called salt of saturn. Succinic acid was known as salt of amber. I love this kind of lore, although I hate handling the chemicals themselves. I'm a theoretical alchemist at heart.
My research also led me to an online household guide from 1840 The Practice of Cookery, by Mrs Dalgairns. In the miscellany section, there are awesome recipes:
PERMANENT INK.
Rub down, in a small mortar, five scruples of lunar caustic, with one drachm of gumarabic, one scruple of sap green, and one ounce of rain water.
TO PREVENT CREAKING HINGES.
Rub them with soft soap, or a feather dipped in sweet oil.
LUNCHEON FOR AN INVALID.
Put bread crumbs and red currant, or any other jelly, alternately into a tumbler, and when nearly half full, fill it up with milk.
Bits and pieces of this kind of knowledge linger on. We still sell soft soap, and camphor, and senega and ammonia for coughs. I used drachms as a unit of measurement at university. My mum believed in egg-and-breadcrumbs, served in a tea-cup, as a meal for a sick child. It's strange to think that every household would have had hundreds of their own recipes for things like boot polish and chest rubs, handed down from person to person, moving from country to country. My mum probably learned about egg-and-breadcrumbs in a direct line from Ireland. It makes me a bit sad that you can just go to a supermarket anywhere in the world and buy Blammo brand Shoe Polish TM. But not sad enough to do this:
SHOE-BLACKING.
To four ounces of ivory-black, allow three ounces of loaf sugar, one table-spoonful of salad oil, one ounce of oil of vitriol, and one pint of vinegar; dissolve the sugar in a little vinegar, put it on the fire together with the oil, and stir it well; when moderately heated, add the pint of vinegar, and ivory-black; and, when cold, stir in the vitriol; put it into a quart bottle, shake it well, and fill it up with vinegar.
Google said Do you mean "salt of sorrow"?
A little more research turns up that it's also called essential salt of lemon, and chemically, is binoxalate of potash, or acid potassium oxalate. I also discovered that lead acetate was called salt of saturn. Succinic acid was known as salt of amber. I love this kind of lore, although I hate handling the chemicals themselves. I'm a theoretical alchemist at heart.
My research also led me to an online household guide from 1840 The Practice of Cookery, by Mrs Dalgairns. In the miscellany section, there are awesome recipes:
PERMANENT INK.
Rub down, in a small mortar, five scruples of lunar caustic, with one drachm of gumarabic, one scruple of sap green, and one ounce of rain water.
TO PREVENT CREAKING HINGES.
Rub them with soft soap, or a feather dipped in sweet oil.
LUNCHEON FOR AN INVALID.
Put bread crumbs and red currant, or any other jelly, alternately into a tumbler, and when nearly half full, fill it up with milk.
Bits and pieces of this kind of knowledge linger on. We still sell soft soap, and camphor, and senega and ammonia for coughs. I used drachms as a unit of measurement at university. My mum believed in egg-and-breadcrumbs, served in a tea-cup, as a meal for a sick child. It's strange to think that every household would have had hundreds of their own recipes for things like boot polish and chest rubs, handed down from person to person, moving from country to country. My mum probably learned about egg-and-breadcrumbs in a direct line from Ireland. It makes me a bit sad that you can just go to a supermarket anywhere in the world and buy Blammo brand Shoe Polish TM. But not sad enough to do this:
SHOE-BLACKING.
To four ounces of ivory-black, allow three ounces of loaf sugar, one table-spoonful of salad oil, one ounce of oil of vitriol, and one pint of vinegar; dissolve the sugar in a little vinegar, put it on the fire together with the oil, and stir it well; when moderately heated, add the pint of vinegar, and ivory-black; and, when cold, stir in the vitriol; put it into a quart bottle, shake it well, and fill it up with vinegar.
