Doesn’t the name of this paste sound nice? Palatine paste. Say it out loud. It sounds like a paste from a strange utopia you can use on your face to turn back the hands of time—or something Revlon would say in the 1990s on a commercial for one of their not-great products.
This product, however, was probably slightly ahead of its time, comparatively speaking. It was an exfoliator, probably used by women with freckles. Whose faces felt like sandpaper. There is so much acid and grit in this cosmetic that it probably would burn and scrape the skin off a pig. And that’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever committed to writing, I think.
So, this recipe contains liquid ethanol, silver sand, and lemon juice. It also contains soft-soap (made with potassium) and olive oil.
Liquid ethanol—or spirits of wine—is just a distilled wine but the Victorians used it in cosmetics. When combined with the acid in the lemon juice, and the fats in the oil, it creates a pickling agent. Which is what chefs do to raw fish nowadays to create ceviche. Cooking without heat.
The silver sand, which is used today in gardening and patio paving, would serve to create the “raw meat” part of this equation by essentially ripping your skin off.
The soft soap, which is softer than bar soap because it’s made with potassium, would combine with the oil to create an emulsificative effect. This is so you cannot feel the silver sand as much as it’s ripping your skin off and then cooking it in oil. The soap made it a cleansing agent that could be used to remove dirt and oils—as well as all the lead and lard ladies would smear everywhere. To prep the skin for more of its application.
It was like a moisturizing soap.
Here it is:
Palatine Paste.
- 8 ounces soft soap
- 4 ounces olive oil
- 4 ounces spirits of wine
- 1-1/2 ounces of lemon juice
- Silver sand enough to form a thick paste
- Perfume enough to make it smell good
Into your kitchen pipkin, you’d pour the oil and soap, then gradually stir in the lemon juice and the sand. When it’s nearly cool, add the spirits of wine, and lastly the perfume. Make into a paste, then put in a jar for use.
Hartley says, [t]his paste is to be used instead of soap, and is a valuable addition to the toilette, as it preserves the skin from chapping, and renders it smooth and soft.
It’s curious that Hartley uses the word render here. I do not think she meant the more commonly used definition that is to provide or give. I think she meant the render that is the fat to make lard.
As in, it takes the flesh and turns it into food that won’t become rancid as it rots. Since you’re turning your face into a kind of ceviche in this recipe, you’re essentially rendering your face into seared meat instead of raw flesh.
And when I think of other Victorian cosmetics, and how they’d basically kill you, you’d probably need to render your own flesh so it wouldn’t rot like the meat cut off an animal. It’s positively disgusting to think about.
I cannot imagine getting this in your eyes.
Another day in the life of a lady in the Victorian Upper Class.