Recipe 146: A Cosmetic Juice

First off I have to say the title of ‘cosmetic juice’ is very off putting to modern sensibilities.

This is another recipe calling for washing the skin in lemon, although in this preparation the lemon is to be roasted.
For this recipe it calls for sugar candy to be inserted into a whole lemon, I prepared in advice a simple sugar and water candy.

It advises to cut a hole in the lemon and once the sugar candy is added to close up the hole with gold leaf. For my experiment I chose tinfoil instead of gold leaf. Since the reason for adding the gold is to close the hole to prevent juices running out and not to interact with main ingredients at all I opted for the cheaper solution.

The lemon is then to be covered in hot ashes and roasted. I built a small fire and burned it down to ash

then inserted the lemon while the ash was still very warm.

The recipe does not specify roasting time so I left the lemon in the ashes until they were almost fully cooled (about 25 minutes).

After removing the lemon from the ashes it was completely covered in fine dust except for the area where the tin foil was covering the hole. The lemon was then left to cool.

The recipe states that when you are ready to use the preparation, to squeeze some of the mixture out of the lemon onto a cloth and wipe the skin with it. This was accomplished quite easily. The liquid that was produced resembled a soft jam or melted candy center.

Upon applying to the skin it left a sticky residue.

The book does not state whether one should wash off the mixture, so I chose to try not washing it. After about 15 minutes the sticky feeling subsided.

The recipe promotes this application as cleaning and brightening. The fact that it is somewhat liquid would clean the skin (or at least give the appearance of cleaner skin). I saw no brightening effect in my use of it.

Overall this was a mostly unpleasant and useless experience. But if you ever want to try making basically jams inside of a lemon go for it!