Most of the recipes include beef suet, which is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find. Another popular ingredient was spermaceti, which is illegal to get now. I have read that jojoba esters, what seems to be a solid (wax) version of jojoba oil is an excellent substitute for spermaceti, but the cost was a bit prohibitive. Other receipts included only oils, which I did know I wanted a solid pomade.
I came across a very good recipe that would most likely prove useful if I chose to go with jojoba esters instead of spermaceti in September 1863, on page 274. It calls for "four ounces oil of almonds, four ounces of best olive oil, one ounce of spermaceti, two ounces of castor oil. Melt these in a covered jar by the side of the fire; then stir in 70 drops of the following perfume... Then pour it into your cream jars, cover, and let stand until cold." I imagine this would give more of an oily pomade instead of a waxy pomade.
Instead, I went with a receipt in February 1861 on page 172. It says, "If any pomade is needed, and equal mixture of cocoa and olive oils, with a little perfume, is very efficacious."
For the perfume, I added a slightly varied version of the perfume described in the first recipe. It is as follows. "Mix together, and shake well in a stopped phial, eight drops of oil of cloves, twenty-five drops of English oil of lavender, one drachm each of essence of bergamot and essence of lemon, and ten drops each of the oils of cassia and otto of roses."
I ended up not adding the cloves or cassia (cinnamon) because both of those scents make me nauseous. Instead, I added eight more drops of lavender and ten more drops of rose oil to give it the same balance. For clarification, a drachm is about 3/4 of a tablespoon. I estimated, perhaps overestimated, because all I could really smell was citrus. The same recipe does state that a cheaper perfume could be used with just either bergamot oil or oil of almonds, but it does state that "subjoined is best."
All searches for cocoa oil landed on what we now call cocoa butter so I purchased a pound of it. Olive oil I usually have on hand.
The previous day, I mixed up the perfume to add to the pomade. As I was subbing extra lavender for the cloves and extra rose for the cassia, I ended up putting 33 drops of lavender, 3/4 tablespoon bergamot, 3/4 tablespoon lemon, and 20 drops of rose oil. I left it to sit overnight in a covered jar.
For the pomade, I was filling small glass jars with metal lids-the closest things I could find to what may have been used in the period. Each jar fits a little more than 2 1/2 tablespoons.
As I was going to make 6 jars, I knew I needed about 15 tablespoons of finished pomade. As the 1861 receipt states that you will need equal measures of cocoa and olive oils, I went with about 7.5 TBSP of each. Eh, I actually couldn't be bothered to accurately measure the cocoa butter so ended up with quite a bit more liquid-enough to fill four more jars. I had to use all of the perfume I mixed up just to get past the overwhelming scent of cocoa. One could theoretically skip the perfume and have chocolate scented hair, I suppose. In fact, that might be a more pleasantly scented option.
A day or two later, I mixed up a bit too much beeswax for another project. I then decided to make up the first receipt cited, but using beeswax instead of spermaceti. The resulting pomade I do love-it is a solid, but melts when you touch it so it is more oily than waxy.
So now I have an overload of pomade-I will most likely be giving some out to some of the people I docent/reenact with.
Enjoy!
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