Scented Powder

My summers are spent conjuring up ways to stay cool.  Middle age has caused a heatwave in me that needs as much chilling as possible.  I have a few standby tried and true remedies I use including cucumber water, violet tisane, mugi cha (Japanese roasted barley tea) and an evening bath followed by a delicate dusting of body powder.

Most commercial powders are made with talc, a mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate, a known carcinogen. There are other materials which are far less toxic and also have great absorptive properties.  Corn starch is often used but bacteria can grow easily in corn so the less noxious alternative is arrowroot powder, a starch obtained from the rhizomes of several tropical plants.

Another alternative base for dusting powder is clay.  Kaolin is often used but I use bentonite (simply because it's what I have on hand).  Clay is absorptive so it's perfect for homemade powders.

My Herbal Body Powder

Scenting the powder is a matter of choice.  You can simply add essential oils to your powder base and mix them up, either in a blender or carefully spraying the oils over the powder and shaking it up.  I prefer to use powdered herbs to scent mine.  I started with powdered orris root and was using an equal amount of that and arrowroot.  Powdered roses and sandalwood are also big favorites of mine.  Some other choices are chamomile, calendula, orange flowers, lavender or just about anything you can manage to grind up.  I buy some things already ground (roses, orris root, sandalwood) and other things I grind myself in a coffee grinder I use specifically for herbs.

Swan's down is the traditional material used for making powder puffs.  I'm opposed to animal cruelty and I'm not sure what the effect is for the swan.  Another alternative is lambswool.  Far less expensive than down and quite a bit larger, you get quite a whomp of powder from one of these beauties.  Otherwise it's synthetic polyester, not even an option in my book.  There are also vintage down puffs available on Etsy and Ebay, some are quite beautiful.  

We have a bit of summer left before the cool autumn blows in.  Pamper your heatstricken self with a little fragrant dusting.

Time Again to Tincture

Colognes and tinctures brewing in my studio

I don't know what it is about summer but it's then that I start trying to capture the fragrances around me in tinctured form.  Maybe it's because I prefer lighter fragrances in the summer, when I switch from heavy perfumes to a splash of cologne instead.  There's something old fashioned about an after bath splash and I thought so even as a teenager in the 70's with the lilac cologne I liberally applied after each nightly bath.

Last summer I had some very good luck tincturing some of the dried herbs, flowers, roots, barks and berries that I've been collecting.  Over the past year I've collected quite a bit more plant material to experiment with.  I've not only collected plants in the park and from my community garden but also collected some from a couple of reputable herb companies.  The first was Dandelion Botanical Company.  My original intent with this order was the accumulation of the necessary ingredients for making bitters.  Not surprisingly I couldn't resist ordering a few other scented materials such as osmanthus flowers and sarasparilla bark.  Recently I received another order of herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs, a package I waited anxiously for which included such luxuries as tonka beans and meadowsweet blossoms.

Another heat wave had me conjuring up cooling and fragrant elixirs to calm the heat-addled spirits.  My new materials had me quite inspired and I made a list of them categorizing them by top, middle and bottom note, just as I would if I were making a perfume.  From there I jotted down some ideas and began blending.  My mortar and pestle were put to good use (that always makes me feel like a real apothecary).  They've been brewing for a month now and today they're being strained off and I'll soon be bottling them up for sale.

My favorite so far is Swamp Water which I dreamt up thinking about the bayou and tall grasses, night air thick with heady florals and sweet tea.  I also made a fougere, my latest obsession, using sweet woodruff, tonka beans, patchouli, jasmine, cassia and lavender.  Eau de la Who is inspired by my guitar hero, Pete Townshend, who I learned wore the classic 4711 when he went onstage.  I plan on sending him some.

Homemade Tonic Water and Mick Jagger

Cocktail Lab met again this past Friday, the gang of four women that concoct the heavenly cocktail recipes reported in this blog.  For this occasion I attempted to make homemade tonic water.  I had most of the ingredients for a recipe I'd read about over the winter and was able to cobble together the remaining ingredients.

The natural source of quinine is cinchona bark, a plant native to the tropical Andes and western South America, which I bought in it's powdered form from Dandelion Botanical Company.  According to Wikpedia, "The medicinal properties of the cinchona tree were originally discovered by the Quecua peoples of Peru and Bolivia, and long cultivated by them as a muscle relaxant to halt shivering due to low temperatures. The Jesuit Brother Agostino Salumbrino (1561–1642), an apothecary by training and who lived in Lima, observed the Quechua using the quinine-containing bark of the cinchona tree for that purpose. While its effect in treating malaria (and hence malaria-induced shivering) was entirely unrelated to its effect in controlling shivering from cold, it was nevertheless the correct medicine for malaria. The use of the “fever tree” bark was introduced into European medicine by Jesuit missionaries (Jesuit's bark). Jesuit Barnabé de Cobo (1582–1657), who explored Mexico and Peru, is credited with taking cinchona bark to Europe. He brought the bark from Lima to Spain, and afterwards to Rome and other parts of Italy, in 1632. After Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Jesuit missionaries were the first to bring the Jesuit's bark cinchona compound to Europe in 1632."

The recipe called for a stalk of lemongrass which I was unable to find.  In it's stead I dipped a toothpick in lemongrass oil and swirled it around in the pot.  A drop would have been too much so in this way I was better able to control the amount used.  Another option would have been to dilute the oil in alcohol and use that by the drop.

The recipe also called for citric acid which I didn't have but after looking around the internet I learned that lemon juice is often substituted for it.

Homemade Tonic Water

1 lemon

1 lime

2 cups of water

2 teaspoons of cinchona bark

1 1/4 teaspoons citric acid (or the juice of one lemon)

1 stalk lemongrass (or a toothpick dipped in lemongrass oil)

1 1/2 cups sugar

Zest the lemon and lime and place in a saucepan, making sure not to include the bitter pith.  Juice lemon and lime and add juice to saucepan, along with water, cinchona bark, citric acid powder, lemongrass, and sugar. Bring to a boil on high heat.  Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 45 minutes. Remove from heat and let mixture steep for 20 minutes.  Allow the mixture to cool and strain through paper coffee filters.  If I'd known better I would have bought the bark in it's raw rather than powdered form to make it easier to filter.  Prepare to wait about eight hours for it to completely filter.  Put in a clean glass jar or bottle and refrigerate.  It makes about a cup and a half of syrup.  The ratio for creating the tonic water is one part tonic syrup to four parts carbonated water.

The day we met was the occasion of the 70th birthday of the premier frontman of rock and roll, Mick Jagger.  I heard on the news that day that Mick keeps in shape with yoga and pilates, runs sprints, dances as much as he can and goes to bed early - 2am.  I think Mick owes much of his success (besides paring with Keith) to the fact that he never really overdid it.  He never became a drunk or a drug addict, never over-indulged.  I read in Pattie Boyd's lovely memoir, "Wonderful Tonight", that after a particularly wild party at Friar Park (the estate she shared with George Harrison) she woke up the next morning, hungover and bleary, to find Mick up washing the dishes before he headed out for a run.

In this spirit we've created a drink deserving of Sir Mick - something not too potent and particularly refreshing on a hot summer eve.

The Mick Jagger

3 ounces tonic syrup

2 ounces grapefruit flavored vodka

12 ounces seltzer

Grapefruit vodka is pretty easy to make.  Simply zest the rind of a pink grapefruit and add to two cups of plain vodka, let sit one month and strain.

By the way, the very next night I made up a batch to bring to the Prospect Park bandshell to see another premier frontman of classic rock, Robert Plant.  Mr. Plant is another that maintained his composure during the turbulant 60's and 70's and has the pipes to prove it.  Bravo!

Heavenly Linden

The linden trees are blooming in Brooklyn once again.  I wait for this time every year, the two weeks when the June air, just before the collasal summer heat, is heavenly sweet with linden.  The genus, Tilia, also called lime tree in Britian, is a deciduous tree with heart shaped leaves, native to Europe and North America.  The flowers are perfect, in other words bisexual, carrying both male and female parts and are pollinated by insects.  The trees can live for centuries and there is one in Gloucestershire that is deemed to be 2000 years old.

The ambrosial aroma of these tiny flowers draws millions of bees and creates linden honey, a pale colored honey despite it's strong aroma and taste.  The aroma is described as woody, pharmacy and fresh, also described as mint, balsamic, menthol and camphor.  Therapeutically the honey is used primarily for treating colds and fever and is said to strengthen the heart.  It is reputed to be one of the best tasting and most valuable honeys in the world.

Medicinally the flowers have been used by herbalists to cure insomnia and nervous anxiety.  A tissane is also good for colds, fevers and nervous headaches.  It is said to be one of the best herbs for hypertension, second only to hawthorne.

I took a walk up my block one morning and harvested about a pound of linden blossoms.  In the cool shade of the tree I had only to reach up and gently pull the copious blossoms into my muslin bag.  They're drying in baskets laid with parchment all over the kitchen.  I'm also tincturing some as I did last summer using successive batches of flowers macerated in the same alcohol.  I'm planning to use it as a perfume base.  It's a difficult aroma to capture and the absolutes I've sampled are lovely but don't come close to capturing it's elusive sweetness.  Even the co2's I've come across, although close, don't really possess it's charms.  It's on it's third round of flowers now and has turned a beautiful pale yellow/green.  The aroma is sweet and has taken on some of the notes in the flowers.  It doesn't have much tenacity and it's very faint but if the right notes are built around it and don't dominate it I think it will give some lovely top notes to a summery fragrance.  (More on tincturing later.)

In Proust's Swann's Way the narrator dips a petite madeleine into a cup of Tilia blossom tea. The aroma and taste of cake and tea triggers his first conscious involuntary memory.  Indeed, the gentle fragrance in the afternoon air triggers memories of June in the late 80's when I first moved to my neighborhood, Park Slope, and had to know where that iniminable fragrance was coming from.


"When from the distant past nothing remains, after the beings have died, after the things are destroyed and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, yet more vital, more insubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of everything else; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the immense architecture of memory.

"Yet again I had recalled the taste of a bit of madeleine dunked in a linden-flower tea which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long await the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house on the street where her room was found, arose like a theatrical tableau…"

–Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann (1913) in: À la recherche du temps perdu vol. 1, p. 47 (Pléiade ed. 1954)(S.H. transl.)

Fougere

I've fallen in love with a fragrance family, the fougere.  French for fern, fougere is a fantasy concept meant to capture the scent of the natural habitat of ferns - the forest floor.  The principal notes in a fougere are oakmoss, tonka bean and lavender.

The first fougere was Fougere Royale by Houbigant, created in 1882, and spurred a whole new perfume category.  While it's probable that these fragrant chords were popular before the release of Fougere Royale, the fragrance captured a moment in time and has forever become linked with it's origination.  Houbigant was the first house to develop a scent chemical meant to replicate the scent of fresh mown hay, otherwise known as coumarin.  Coumarin is present in tonka beans, hay, sweet clover, sweet woodruff, sweetgrass, flouve and deertounge and in lesser degrees lavender, cassia, cherries, strawberries and apricots.  It is an overall pleasant odor reminiscent of sweet grass with vanilla overtones.

Jicky by Guerlain was created soon after in 1889 and it has notes of lavender, rosemary, bergamot,  opoponax, precious woods, vanilla, and tonka bean.


Fougere captured the imagination of perfumers who used tonka, oakmoss and lavender as a base to create new versions of the concept.  Often the base is supplemented by patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood and myrrh.  Often there is a rosy heart supported by geranium and clary sage, jasmine and orange blossom with top notes of lavender, rosewood, citrus, rosemary and bergamot.  There are sub-categories of floral, fresh, oriental, amber, leather and precious wood fougeres.

I'm hosting a fougere workshop in my home atelier on Saturday, July 27th.  We'll be sampling Fougere Royale, Jicky and a careful selection of fragrances by some of the botanical perfume world's best perfumers including Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Charna Ethier, Ayala Moriel and others.  Each participant will get to create two perfumes using an assortment of oils I've collected just for the occasion.  Tonka bean, sweet clover and hay absolute will be on hand along with several lavender absolutes and essential oils.  This will be an opportunity to experiment with a few rare and precious oils like orris, ambrette, choya nak, ho wood, buddahwood and wild sweet orange.

Fougere Workshop

Saturday, July 27th

1:30 to 4:30

$130 includes all materials

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Call (718)788-6480 or send an email to info@herbalalchemy.net for more information or to register.

It's a Good Thing: A Little Mention in Martha Stewart Weddings

This put a smile on my face!  A few months ago I got an email from someone at MS Weddings asking me for information about fragrance parties for brides.  They were writing a feature about alternatives to traditional bachelorette parties and wanted to include ideas for classes.  It's really a great idea.  I'd much prefer making jewelry, cheese, perfume or pretty much just about anything than drink too much and watch some smarmy guy undress!

To learn more or book a party click here.

Midnight Garden

My newest perfume, Midnight Garden, is the joint creation of the lovely women of The Robert Allen Group and myself.  The Group has designed a new line of fabrics inspired by hanging orchids, twisting vines and hidden temples.  What they described to me was a rainforest, with orchids hanging in the trees, thick with fragrance in the night air.  Wild sweet orange, petitgrain and coriander CO2 greet the nose, sitting on top of a jasmine, neroli and honey heart.  At the bottom of this sultry midnight perfume is the vanilla orchid with peru balsam and oakmoss to finish.

Midnight Garden

20ml bottle

$55.00

 1ml sample

$7.00