Cold Cream, 1850

Cold cream for excoriated nostrils, chafed upper lips, or chapped hands may be made nearly as above [red lip salve] but with one third suet and two thirds lard and no alkanet. When it has boiled thoroughly, remove it from the fire, and stir in gradually a large portion of rose water or a little oil of rhodium, beating very hard. Put it into small gallicups with close covers. 

--Miss Leslie's Lady's New Receipt Book (1850)

 

I actually made this at the same time as the aforementioned red lip salve, just melting the remaining 3 oz of washed suet with 6 oz of lard, stirring in 1 Tbsp of orange-flower water as it cooled. As with the lip salve, I found the straining to be the hardest part (even with careful picking, there will be bits left in the suet). Having now tried several mutton suet recipes, I'm not convinced there is a material difference between using the mutton tallow and suet on salves and pomatums, save that the suet requires the extra picking/straining.

Cold cream. It looks like every other skin/hair pomatum.

This cold cream is much more malleable than the different wax/spermaceti/mutton tallow pomatums and ointments I've been experimenting with lately. The closest comparison is to the rose ointment; of the two, I find this softer one much easier to actually apply. It does soothe rough skin as intended, but with a little of the greasiness I've come to expect in animal-fat-based skin preparations. It's not as tidy as modern lotion, but it does the trick.

Although the recipe calls for rosewater, the related lip salve allows for either rose or orange-flower water; since I already have a rose-scented cold cream made up, and hadn't made any other rose-scented lip salves lately, I decided to reverse the scents on these two. The amount of orange-flower water is a guess, and more probably wouldn't hurt. It is sufficient to cover any lingering lard/suet scents in the tin, though I can detect a faint sheep odor when applied. More importantly, this salve hasn't had rosewater [orange-flower water] pooling or leaking out as in the most recent batch of red lip salve and the rose ointment.

All told, I think this will continue to be my usual cold-cream recipe, though I'll probably stick with the tallow over suet, and probably beef tallow over mutton (for the smell). The