CALENDULA SALVE

The history: The pot marigold has grown at kitchen doors across Europe and the Mediterranean for at least eight centuries, the flower of monastery physic gardens and the poor man's saffron in the soup pot.

Traditional use: Steeped in oil in a warm window for weeks, then pressed onto dry, weathered skin. The petals went to the broth and the oil went to the salve jar.

The science: The petals carry triterpenoids and flavonoids, and jojoba is a liquid wax whose esters sit close to the sebum human skin makes on its own. This infusion is 65 percent of the tin.

The history: Coconuts have been pressed for oil across the Pacific and Indian Ocean tropics for thousands of years, and the tree has fed and oiled whole coastlines.

Traditional use: The warm-pressed island skin oil, worked in by hand from head to heel.

The science: It is high in lauric acid and solid below 76 degrees, so it melts precisely at skin temperature. That is the glide in this salve, and the reason it never feels greasy going on.

The history: The oldest cosmetic wax we know of; Egyptian and Roman ointments were set with it, and it has sealed pots ever since.

Traditional use: The set and the seal. Every old salve recipe used wax to hold the oil where you put it.

The science: Its long-chain esters form a breathable, water-resistant film, so the oils stay on the skin and keep working instead of vanishing into the first hand wash.

The history: Identified in wheat germ oil in 1922 and named tocopherol from the Greek for childbirth and bearing, for the role it plays in the body.

Traditional use: The modern salve-maker's insurance, added to keep a natural oil from turning before its time.

The science: A fat-soluble antioxidant that slows the oxidation of the carrier oils, which protects both the infusion and the smell of the tin.

The history: A Roman bath herb and a linen-closet herb, grown along every Mediterranean road and hung in kitchens to sweeten the air.

Traditional use: The calming oil of the household stillroom, dropped into washing water, salves, and sleep pillows.

The science: Linalool and linalyl acetate carry most of its aroma; the flowers are distilled for the oil at about 0.7 percent of this batch.

The history: The Bundjalung peoples of eastern Australia used the leaves long before 1770, when Cook's crew brewed them as a tea and gave the tree its English name.

Traditional use: Crushed leaves and leaf tea, worked into skin that needed clearing; a first-aid plant of the Australian bush.

The science: Terpinen-4-ol is its signature compound and gives the oil its clean, camphor-sharp smell. It sits at 0.7 percent here, carried over from our original salve.

The history: Lemons travelled the Mediterranean and then the world's navies, prized as much for their peel as their juice.

Traditional use: The brightening peel oil of the kitchen stillroom, used to cut heaviness in a balm.

The science: Steam distillation leaves behind the furanocoumarins found in cold-pressed lemon peel, the compounds that make cold-pressed lemon phototoxic in a leave-on product. That is why we specify distilled and nothing else.