Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 22 Classification (Part [-])
At this time, Gao Xiaozhuang replied with some embarrassment: "Eldest young master, uh...they said that the term civet cat fragrance may be wrong, and they said that they only know beaver fragrance, or it can also be called fragrant beaver fragrance."

Gao Wushi hesitated when he heard the words, and thought to himself how do I know what this thing is called now, anyway, it was called civet incense in the previous life!
He would think so, but in fact it was due to his own lack of knowledge. Civets, whether they are big civets or small civets, belonged to the scientific names of later biology. In fact, there were quite a lot of names for these two animals in ancient China.Among them, the big civet is also called Wen raccoon, ling raccoon, civet, fragrant raccoon, fragrant cat, mountain raccoon, nine-section raccoon, Jiujiang raccoon, five raccoons, sending feces raccoon, five-inch spotted raccoon, seven-branch raccoon, green mane, and He raccoon. and so on; and the small civet is also called pen cat, spotted civet, civet cat, seven civet, black-legged civet, Baogong civet, civet civet and so on.

Of course, Gao Yushi really doesn’t know what the name of the civet incense in this era is. He claimed that the civet incense was denied by others, so he could only pinch his nose to recognize it——well, well, you are experts, what do you say? It is what it is.

So he coughed dryly and covered it up a bit: "Oh, so this thing is called raccoon in the capital? Well, then...how about the price of raccoon?"

"It's much cheaper than ambergris, but it's also very expensive!" Gao Xiaozhuang stretched out a finger: "One tael of silver can only buy seven taels of raccoon incense, and I heard that there are not many of them."

Gao Wushi nodded, thinking about it.

According to the purchasing power of silver in Daming, this price is indeed very expensive, but fortunately, this thing is only used as a fixative in soap, not the main ingredient, although Gao Yushi does not know the fixative when making soap The specific consumption amount, but since it is not the main ingredient, the amount used will definitely not be particularly large, so it is completely sufficient to support.

As for the shortage of goods, it is completely understandable that this question is highly pragmatic. After all, perfumes are not popular in China. China has always used incense and sachets, so civet incense is likely to belong to the category of medicinal materials at this time, and most of them are The kind that doesn't use much.As for perfume, it cannot be said that there were no such things in ancient China, but most of them are similar to toilet water. Anti-itch toilet water is not the same thing at all.

The shortage of goods is certainly a problem, but Gao Yushi thinks it is not a big problem.Where the benefits lie, what people tend to do.As long as his tall young master is willing to place an order, some people are willing to go all out for the supply of civet incense—I am not short of manpower, and there is no shortage of civets in the mountains in this era, but there are many people who are short of money.

He even felt that if the soap business continued to boom in the future, it might be able to spawn farms where civets were bred artificially for incense and sold.Of course, these can only be regarded as long-term plans in an ideal state, and the current focus must not be on these things.

Therefore, it is temporarily decided to use civet scent as the fixative for soap.There is only one remaining problem, the diversity of flavors.

He vaguely remembered that when he was in the county party committee, when he went to Guangdong with a delegation to investigate the daily chemical industry, a local daily chemical company introduced the development history of some flavors to them. It seems that around 1857, humans began to start from lignite resin The hydrocarbons obtained in the process are nitrated, and the products obtained have aromas similar to almond oil and musk oil.Since then, due to the rapid development of the chemical industry, artificial synthetic flavors have become popular.

But it is certainly impossible for him to skip natural flavors and go for synthetic flavors now.Because the extraction of natural essence cannot become a bottleneck restricting the production of soap. After all, the required raw materials are abundant enough in this era. On the contrary, there are not enough technical conditions for artificially synthesized essence.Since the technical conditions are insufficient, it is obvious that there is no advantage in the cost of natural flavors.

As a result, the range of choices is greatly reduced, and only natural flavors can be considered.Considering the cost, it must be based on the plant flavors that Daming has sufficient output in.In later generations, natural plant flavors are quite famous, such as sandalwood from India, rose from Bulgaria, mint and star anise from China, cinnamon from Sri Lanka and lavender from France.But obviously, there is no need to consider those that Daming did not have for the time being.

In addition to mint and star anise, there are bay leaves and cinnamon bark that can be easily obtained in large quantities in the land of Ming Dynasty, but apart from mint, the others don't seem to be particularly suitable as soap essences.It is better to use flowers on the skin.

Thanks to China's vast land and rich resources, there are many choices of flowers, such as roses All in all, especially the thorns of roses were considered as a manifestation of "jealousy" in ancient China, so there are not many masterpieces left, and the reputation of this flower is not very good. ], jasmine, sweet-scented osmanthus, white orchid, yellow orchid, magnolia, etc. There are countless categories suitable for making essences.

Of course, don’t be so ambitious at the beginning, you might as well choose mint, jasmine, and sweet-scented osmanthus as the three most unique and distinct scents to test the water, and the rest will be released slowly.For example, rose fragrance, if it can be exported to Europe, it may be very profitable, but if it can only be sold in Daming before then, at least it needs to make a foreshadowing in the literary world-for example, a well-known masterpiece, otherwise The group interested in it may be too small - who would think that they are jealous?

As for the extraction methods of essence and sesame oil, Gao Wushi is not very clear about the level of the Ming Dynasty, but he thinks that since China was already very good at making sachets and sachets in the Tang Dynasty, it even developed to use flowers to make sauce in the Ming Dynasty , brewing wine, and scenting tea, then extracting essence and making sesame oil should be a no-brainer.

Taking a step back, even if the extraction level is found to be insufficient at that time, there is no need to worry at all. He still has two or three methods that are not too technically demanding. The head of the production department learned it when he talked about the development history of flavor production. Although people didn't talk about it in detail at the time, it should be more than enough to deal with the current level of flavor production.

After clarifying these production matters, Gao Pragmatic began to relax, and the next thing to consider was to increase the added value of the product as much as possible.

The two best ways to increase the added value of products are monopoly and brand.

The issue of monopoly is easy to deal with. Sanbo Gaogong is currently in power, and there is no such thing as the "Anti-Monopoly Law". As long as the technical secrecy is in place, other indiscriminate means can be ignored at least temporarily.

Therefore, the only thing to be done is the brand.

(End of this chapter)