What is Essence of Mereby?
April 25, 2024 2:09 PM Subscribe
An old book I’m reading mentions essence of mereby. I’ve never heard of this and I am looking for more information.
A book of household instruction from 1838 contains a recipe for making perfume which includes as an ingredient “essence of mereby”. Google avails me naught. Any idea what this might be? And if you have a reference source, I’d be interested in learning what that is too because clearly my own shelves are lacking. If I don’t find an answer here, I’ll reach out to a perfumer’s organization but thought a mefite might be joyful for the chance to share obscure knowledge.
A book of household instruction from 1838 contains a recipe for making perfume which includes as an ingredient “essence of mereby”. Google avails me naught. Any idea what this might be? And if you have a reference source, I’d be interested in learning what that is too because clearly my own shelves are lacking. If I don’t find an answer here, I’ll reach out to a perfumer’s organization but thought a mefite might be joyful for the chance to share obscure knowledge.
Looks like it's on page 226 of this book here.
I went searching for this figuring it was likely to be a bad OCR of the original text, but it's here in this very high res scan of an 1838 printing.
posted by phunniemee at 3:13 PM on April 25 [2 favorites]
I went searching for this figuring it was likely to be a bad OCR of the original text, but it's here in this very high res scan of an 1838 printing.
posted by phunniemee at 3:13 PM on April 25 [2 favorites]
Though I suppose that doesn't rule out that the author copied the text from a handwritten recipe, misread it, and didn't bother to know themselves. Possibly just chucked it in the book without even giving it a test. (The dodgy tiktok recipe hack of their era.)
mereby written in script could easily be the word hereby or could start with the letters nev or end with the letters bey or tey or heck could even be þy (thy) and might have been any number of other words originally
posted by phunniemee at 3:21 PM on April 25
mereby written in script could easily be the word hereby or could start with the letters nev or end with the letters bey or tey or heck could even be þy (thy) and might have been any number of other words originally
posted by phunniemee at 3:21 PM on April 25
Mereby doesn't appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, which suggests this may be a very isolated useage or, as phunniemee suggests, a typo. Either way, good luck on this one!
posted by einekleine at 3:31 PM on April 25
posted by einekleine at 3:31 PM on April 25
For what it's worth, I don't see it mentioned in The Oxford Companion to Food or on Fragrantica.com or The Perfumer's Apprentice. Maybe expand your search to include "merevy" since "b" and "v" can be transposed when they're brought over to English. Neither do I see anything for variations: maraby, moraby, muraby, mereby, etc.
The only other place I find the word mereby is in an 1898 text, and it's a mis-identification of the script "merely," as phunniemee speculates.
posted by cocoagirl at 3:32 PM on April 25
The only other place I find the word mereby is in an 1898 text, and it's a mis-identification of the script "merely," as phunniemee speculates.
posted by cocoagirl at 3:32 PM on April 25
I've had a look at other cologne recipes from a similar era on the assumption that there might be a similar ingredient but unfortunately the recipes are so diverse that I can't really see anything that might be the mysterious mereby.
However, one ingredient that does turn up in a lot of the perfume recipes that I have is benzoin, which is a gum used as a "fixative" to prevent the essential oils and essences from evaporating too fast. The mereby recipe doesn't have a fixitive listed, which I think is interesting. And while I don't think mereby is benzoin, I suggest that it could possibly be a different fixative.
If that's the case, I wonder if it might be gum arabic which is sometimes used as a fixative, and which is sometimes written as "Araby" in old recipes and could conceivably be misheard or misread as "mereby" by someone who wasn't familiar with the ingredient.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:43 PM on April 25 [19 favorites]
However, one ingredient that does turn up in a lot of the perfume recipes that I have is benzoin, which is a gum used as a "fixative" to prevent the essential oils and essences from evaporating too fast. The mereby recipe doesn't have a fixitive listed, which I think is interesting. And while I don't think mereby is benzoin, I suggest that it could possibly be a different fixative.
If that's the case, I wonder if it might be gum arabic which is sometimes used as a fixative, and which is sometimes written as "Araby" in old recipes and could conceivably be misheard or misread as "mereby" by someone who wasn't familiar with the ingredient.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:43 PM on April 25 [19 favorites]
Essence of neroli/neroly?
Here is an example of an old handwritten recipe for eau de cologne that contains essence of neroli as an ingredient. I'm guessing the recipe you're looking at was incorrectly transcribed from a handwritten recipe similar to this, and "neroly" became "mereby".
posted by Syllepsis at 3:51 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
Here is an example of an old handwritten recipe for eau de cologne that contains essence of neroli as an ingredient. I'm guessing the recipe you're looking at was incorrectly transcribed from a handwritten recipe similar to this, and "neroly" became "mereby".
posted by Syllepsis at 3:51 PM on April 25 [13 favorites]
Mistranscription, of "neroly" (neroli) or ambergris?
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:51 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:51 PM on April 25 [1 favorite]
Though I suppose that doesn't rule out that the author copied the text from a handwritten recipe, misread it, and didn't bother to know themselves. Possibly just chucked it in the book without even giving it a test.
I think this is it, because..."cedras?" Neroli seems the most likely mistranscribed word there.
posted by praemunire at 4:46 PM on April 25
I think this is it, because..."cedras?" Neroli seems the most likely mistranscribed word there.
posted by praemunire at 4:46 PM on April 25
Cedras is a very old English word for cedar so I don't think that one is another mangled word - although the text does list cedar wood elsewhere. I did wonder if it it was neroli, given the large amount of citrus-scented oils used in this particular recipe. The workbook does list gum arabic in other recipes, and it is always powdered in those instances so that's a strike against my earlier theory. I don't think it's ambergris given that the recipe directly above lists it unambiguously.
posted by ninazer0 at 5:12 PM on April 25
posted by ninazer0 at 5:12 PM on April 25
I wonder if cedras might be the citron:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cedrat
posted by zadcat at 5:55 PM on April 25
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cedrat
posted by zadcat at 5:55 PM on April 25
For the cedras conjecture – it happens to be already in the recipe.
No. 57.
TO MAKE EAU DE COLOGNE.
Spirits of tine (rectified at 36 degrees), one pound and a half,
Essence of bergamot, two drachms,
Essence of rosemary, half a drachm,
Essence of cedras, half a drachm,
Essence of lemon, half a drachm.
Essence of orange flowers, twenty drops,
Essence of mereby, twenty drops,
Spirits of melisse, one ounce and a half,
Of soft water, boiled and dropt slowly through clean blotting paper, one quart.
posted by dum spiro spero at 10:59 PM on April 25
No. 57.
TO MAKE EAU DE COLOGNE.
Spirits of tine (rectified at 36 degrees), one pound and a half,
Essence of bergamot, two drachms,
Essence of rosemary, half a drachm,
Essence of cedras, half a drachm,
Essence of lemon, half a drachm.
Essence of orange flowers, twenty drops,
Essence of mereby, twenty drops,
Spirits of melisse, one ounce and a half,
Of soft water, boiled and dropt slowly through clean blotting paper, one quart.
posted by dum spiro spero at 10:59 PM on April 25
Melisse is possibly/probably Lemon Balm, known as Melissa (English) or latin Melissa officinalis.
Given that, and the other types of things on that list, mereby sounds like it could some herb, flower, or citrus.
Mereby is seen here and there as a surname, and it appears in a few books by James Blyth from the early 1900s.
Blyth's book Deborah's Life identifies Meresby as "in Daneshire, not from from Easterby, in the year 1870."
Those places might all by imaginary - I'm not certain.
It seems like the most productive things to track down might be lists of flower and herb names in English of the period, French, Latin, etc., including possible spelling variations such as those suggested by cocoagirl.
posted by flug at 12:47 AM on April 26
Given that, and the other types of things on that list, mereby sounds like it could some herb, flower, or citrus.
Mereby is seen here and there as a surname, and it appears in a few books by James Blyth from the early 1900s.
Blyth's book Deborah's Life identifies Meresby as "in Daneshire, not from from Easterby, in the year 1870."
Those places might all by imaginary - I'm not certain.
It seems like the most productive things to track down might be lists of flower and herb names in English of the period, French, Latin, etc., including possible spelling variations such as those suggested by cocoagirl.
posted by flug at 12:47 AM on April 26
Looking at a few lists of floral essences etc, the only one that possibly rings a bell at all is Mariposa (wiki). I could see that being pronounced similar to Marposy and that morphing into Mereby or similar. Long shot, but maybe.
Enquiring with some of the various dealers in essences and such might be a fruitful avenue. Also they may have old catalogs and reference lists of essences and such - example.
posted by flug at 1:01 AM on April 26
Enquiring with some of the various dealers in essences and such might be a fruitful avenue. Also they may have old catalogs and reference lists of essences and such - example.
posted by flug at 1:01 AM on April 26
Could mereby have descended from the Anglo Saxon/Old English for mulberry: mórberige? (Latin name: morus alba, French mûre.) In my head I hear mereby as "merri-bee" but maybe it's pronounced "meer-bee." I think mórberige would be pronounced "more-berry" or "more-ber-eye" which could trickle into (or misspelled as) mereby. Mulberry is used as a scent ingredient.
posted by cocoagirl at 6:28 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
posted by cocoagirl at 6:28 AM on April 26 [2 favorites]
The sound of the initial syllable is shared with myrrh, and I wonder if it's a mangling of that.
posted by jocelmeow at 11:53 AM on April 26
posted by jocelmeow at 11:53 AM on April 26
Another handwritten recipe with neroli that could lend itself to mistranscription.
posted by bethnull at 3:46 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]
posted by bethnull at 3:46 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]
It looks like others are strongly favoring Syllepsis's mistranscription of neroli theory, and thinking it over, I am, too.
Besides the fact that a handwritten neroli could clearly and easily be mistranscribed as something like mereby, a couple of other factors push me in the same direction:
#1. Neroli is clearly a very common ingredient in eau de cologne. A quick survey suggests it might be the top eau de cologne ingredient not otherwise listed in the recipe on p. 226 of The Workwoman's Guide. If not the #1 most common ingredient not otherwise listed, it is certainly in the top 3 or 4.
This alone puts it at the top or, at minimum, very near the top of candidates for mereby.
Here are some sample eau de cologne recipes from about the same period featuring neroli: 1 2 3 4 5. Those are just a very few of very many.
#2. Neroli is not otherwise mentioned in The Workwoman's Guide, nor is there another recipe for eau de cologne. Nor are most of the other ingredients specific to eau de cologne mentioned or used elsewhere.
If the author had included 10 recipes for eau de cologne and 8 of them included neroli while one of the others included this mysterious mereby, you'd be more inclined to think the author knows exactly what neroli is and mereby is thus more likely to be something interesting and definitely different.
However, this author probably does not appear to know a whole lot about eau de cologne and its ingredients in general, or neroli in particular.
In this situation, an error in transcription involving neroli seems both more likely to occur and less likely to be noticed.
posted by flug at 8:56 PM on April 27 [1 favorite]
Besides the fact that a handwritten neroli could clearly and easily be mistranscribed as something like mereby, a couple of other factors push me in the same direction:
#1. Neroli is clearly a very common ingredient in eau de cologne. A quick survey suggests it might be the top eau de cologne ingredient not otherwise listed in the recipe on p. 226 of The Workwoman's Guide. If not the #1 most common ingredient not otherwise listed, it is certainly in the top 3 or 4.
This alone puts it at the top or, at minimum, very near the top of candidates for mereby.
Here are some sample eau de cologne recipes from about the same period featuring neroli: 1 2 3 4 5. Those are just a very few of very many.
#2. Neroli is not otherwise mentioned in The Workwoman's Guide, nor is there another recipe for eau de cologne. Nor are most of the other ingredients specific to eau de cologne mentioned or used elsewhere.
If the author had included 10 recipes for eau de cologne and 8 of them included neroli while one of the others included this mysterious mereby, you'd be more inclined to think the author knows exactly what neroli is and mereby is thus more likely to be something interesting and definitely different.
However, this author probably does not appear to know a whole lot about eau de cologne and its ingredients in general, or neroli in particular.
In this situation, an error in transcription involving neroli seems both more likely to occur and less likely to be noticed.
posted by flug at 8:56 PM on April 27 [1 favorite]
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posted by cocoagirl at 3:08 PM on April 25