Why I Stopped Making Scented Tallow

I used to make scented tallow. If you bought from me a couple of years ago you might still have one of those jars in a drawer. The tallow lotion I make now has no essential oils in it, and I’m not going back.

I didn’t stop to save money or to simplify. I stopped because of who was buying it.

Why I stopped

When somebody asks at the tent, I tell them I moved away from scenting it to keep it as safe as possible for everyone who’s going to use it.

That’s the short answer, and behind it is a problem I kept running into. A lot of the people who buy tallow lotion have skin that’s already in trouble, or they’re buying for somebody whose skin is. Eczema. A baby’s bottom. A pregnant woman who’s been told to read every label. Somebody’s grandmother with thin, papery skin.

Every one of them asked me some version of “is this okay for…” and my answer changed depending on which jar they’d picked up. I didn’t like giving different answers about something people were about to put on a child.

What essential oils are

Concentrated plant extract. The word natural does a lot of work in how they get sold, but concentrated is the part that matters.

A single drop of essential oil is the volatile part of a lot of plant material, squeezed down. That’s why it smells so strong, and it’s also why the safety guidance around essential oils runs so long. There are dilution limits, oils to avoid in pregnancy, oils to keep away from young children, and oils that shouldn’t go near a face.

None of that makes them dangerous in general. It makes them a variable, and I didn’t want a variable in a jar somebody was about to put on a newborn.

The sun problem

Some essential oils react with sunlight on skin. It’s called phototoxicity, and citrus oils are the main ones that do it.

The compounds behind it are called furanocoumarins, and they’re in cold-pressed citrus oils. They soak up ultraviolet light and pass that energy into your skin cells. What you get is burning, redness, blistering and dark marks that can last months. Dermatologists have been writing this up for decades, including a case in Contact Dermatitis traced to an aromatherapy oil.

Bergamot is the famous one. Cold-pressed lemon, lime, bitter orange and grapefruit are all on the list too. Symptoms can show up within a day and peak two or three days after you were in the sun, and by then almost nobody connects it to the lotion they put on that morning.

The people I sell to around the valley spend a lot of time outside. I’d rather that risk wasn’t in the jar at all.

What one safe jar gets you

One jar in the house that everybody uses.

The person it helps most is whoever does the buying, usually a mom. Without it she has to remember which one is fine for the baby, which one she was told to avoid while pregnant, and which one made her mother’s arms itch. With one recipe there’s nothing to remember.

The uses people tell me about: face, over or under makeup. Whole body. A baby’s bottom. The backs of your hands. Cracked heels. Same jar for all of it.

It also means I can answer straight. When somebody asks if it’s fine for a two week old, I don’t have to ask which jar they’re holding.

What I gave up

Some sales, at least at first. Scented lotion is easier to sell at a market. Somebody walks past, catches a whiff of something floral, and stops. Vanilla doesn’t stop anybody in a crowded room.

Variety too. Every scent was its own product and its own reason for a regular to come back for something new. One recipe is one product, and I have to sell it on what it does instead of on being new.

And some gift buyers. People shopping for a present like to choose, and the only choice here is the size.

I’d make the same call again. A slower sell for a jar I can hand to anybody without a warning attached is a trade I’m fine with.

What replaced the scent

After the second render, the fat sits in organic vanilla beans. It’s not a fragrance stirred into a finished product. The vanilla steeps into the fat itself, which is slower and harder to control, and it’s why the strength varies a little from batch to batch.

People say it smells like cake. It’s faint, and it fades on your skin within a few minutes.

The vanilla is also doing a second job. Tallow that’s only been rendered twice still smells a little like what it is, and the vanilla is what makes that pleasant. Why I stop at two renders is in Why We Render the Tallow Twice, and the rest of the ingredient list is in What’s Actually in the Lotion.

When somebody asks for a specific oil

It happens most weeks. Somebody has read that a certain oil is good for a certain thing and wants it in the lotion.

The answer is no, and it’s not because they’re wrong about the oil. It’s because a jar made for one person ends up in somebody else’s bathroom. Lotion goes in a cupboard. A husband with a cracked thumb grabs it, or it gets lent to a sister with a new baby, and nobody reads the label on the jar that lives in the cupboard.

With one recipe that never matters. Every jar that leaves here is the same jar, so whoever picks it up is fine.

There’s a second reason. I’d have two products and the second one would be worse. A small batch I make once in a while, to a recipe I don’t use often, isn’t going to be as good as the thing I make every time.

And a third. If I made a version with some oil in it, I’d be selling the idea that the oil was doing something, and I can’t tell you that it is.

If you want a scent

Put it on after. A perfume, an oil, whatever you like, on top of the lotion instead of mixed into it.

That way the thing touching the baby is the thing you picked for the baby, and the thing that smells is something you can skip on a day you’ll be outside. That’s about what I do myself.