The Art of Perfumery, and Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants

SCENTING SOAPS HOT. In the previous remarks, the methods explained of scenting soap involved the necessity of melting it. The high temperature of the soap under these circumstances involves the obvious loss of a great deal of perfume by evaporation. With very highly scented soaps, and with perfume of an expensive character, the loss of ottos is too great to be borne in a commercial sense; hence the adoption of the plan of SCENTING SOAPS COLD. This method is exceedingly convenient and economical for scenting small batches, involving merely mechanical labor, the tools required being simply an ordinary carpenter's plane, and a good marble mortar, and lignum vitæ pestle. The woodwork of the plane must be fashioned at each end, so that when placed over the mortar it remains firm and not easily moved by the parallel pressure of the soap against its projecting blade. To commence operations, we take first 7 lbs., 14 lbs., or 21 lbs. of the bars of the soap that it is intended to perfume. The plane is now laid upside down across the top of the mortar. Things being thus arranged, the whole of the soap is to be pushed across the plane until it is all reduced into fine shavings. Like the French "Charbonnier," who does not saw the wood, but woods the saw, so it will be perceived that in this process we do not plane the soap, but that we soap the plane, the shavings of which fall lightly into the mortar as quickly as produced.