HERB - Two Questions

[Jenne Heise]

> back of Hugh Plat's "Delights for Ladies" list it as Beniamin as says it is
> Frankincense.  It is also listed in the glossary of Gervase Markham's "The
> English Housewife" as benjamin, a resin from the tree Liquidamber
> orientalis.  I have also read that it is actually benzoin or storax, a gum
> resin.  Anybody else have more insight??

Well, no luck on the benn, or benne, though I think I read it somewhere--
no idea where.

However, on the other questions:
Clarkson (_Magic Gardens_, p. 287), sez:
"Benzoin, which you will find written in the opld time recipes in the
corrupt form of "bejamin", is a resin from the benzoin tree (Styrax
Benzoin), a tree of Malacca, Java and Sumatra, and perhaps obtained from
another species of the styrax family. The hard resin must be finely ground
before using for your potpourri. Storax, also to be used in fine powdered
form, is a balsam  now usually obtained from the bark of the tree called
Liquidamber orientalis. It is a brown, honey-like liquid which hardens on
standing. Storax in the old days was, and still is to some extent,
obtained from the tree, Styrax officinalis, and is used in a ticnture of
benzoin compound. In an old potpourri recipe, I found a that for the
fixative "both storaxes" were called for, meaning the resin from the two
tress, Styrax Benzoin and Styrax officinalis."

Roy Genders (_Perfume through the Ages_)  mentions oil of ben in
connection with the perfume Khyphi; he also says:
"The finest fat oil is know as oil of Ben which is colourless, tasteless,
and neverbecomes rancid. The Behen tree is the Hyperanthera moringa, an
Eastern tree now naturalized in the West Indies, the seeds of which yeild
twenty-five percent of oil. Benzoic acid, prepared from the resinous gum
of Styrax Benzoin by the humin process, is also odorless.

He also distinguishes between Benzoi (Styrax Benzoin), Storax (Styrax
officinalis) and liquid storax (Liquidamber orientalis).

 
> I am going to use Oil of Frankincense as a substitute for Oil of Benjamin
> for some of the works being competed.  Does anyone have a better
> suggestion??

Oil fashioned drugstores also have Tincture of Benzoin..

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
	"Oh it's all too much, too grim, too lovely, too -- how should 
	I put this? It's general chaos." -- Edward Gorey

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.