“As a child, I remember my grandmother, Annie Lang Tuckfield making a batch of salve in a cast iron kettle on a wood burning kitchen stove at my home on Green Street in Salt Lake City Utah. The rosin smoked as it melted and filled the room with a pine aroma. The beeswax melted easily as it was blended in. The butter bubbled to a froth as it was added. She then poured the melted mixture into round tin containers. The labels were individually trimmed round and pasted on the covers. The label read:
OLD ENGLISH SALVE
For cuts burns boils
Ingrown nails and
Especially bed sores.
Fifty cents a tin.
"The recipe was brought over from the old country (
"Apply to a bandage over sore parts. Most recently I used it on my heels, cracked and painful from hiking in the dry highlands of
I now am passing on the legacy of my great grandmother of the healing salve. I make the original recipe, but add Pine essential oil because the only rosin I can obtain has had the original pine removed.
I also make available a “new” version. I added essential oils of Blue cypress, Blue Tansy, Tea Tree, and Pine. Instead of unsalted butter, I use the more modern ingredients of Shea butter, cocoa butter and jojoba oil. The oils add antiseptic & anti-inflammatory properties. I make it in small batches and it needs no preservatives because of the oils and the Rosin. I call it Outback Desert Salve.
