How to make Eau de Cologne

Here is another fascinating recipe from Annie Earle/Welch’s book. It is interesting to think that ladies might have been making their own perfume at home about a hundred years ago. However, this is one of the pages that we find difficult to decipher, partly due to the handwriting, but also as we are not familiar with all of the ingredients.

We think that the quantity of most of items was one drachm. This was a unit of weight equal to an eighth of an ounce. (16 ozs = 1lb and 2lb 3oz is about 1kg, for readers more familiar with metric weights and measures.)

We can spot the need for lemon, bergamot, rosemary and cinnamon, but the other ingredients are rather a mystery. If you can work them out, you need to mix them into five pints of best French spirits of wine. We wonder what the perfume smelt like.