Cosmetics House in Farmstead World — building in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
A cosmetics house turns plain farm goods into toiletries: soap scented with lavender, perfume steeped from rose petals in grain alcohol, body powder from corn starch, and lip balm from beeswax and plant oil.
Almost all of it is a question of carriers and scents: a base such as soap, alcohol, oil or starch holds the fragrance, and the flowers supply it.
People have scented themselves for as long as there have been flowers: ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia steeped petals and resins in oil, soap-making spread from the Mediterranean through trade, and the perfume trade of Grasse in France grew up around local flower fields. Alcohol-based perfumes arrived with distillation in the medieval period.
A cosmetics workshop is mostly a set of carriers. Soap is cooked fat or oil, perfume is fragrance dissolved in ethyl alcohol, powders are fine starch, and balms are plant oil set with beeswax. Fragrance comes from petals and flowers, which are macerated in the carrier or distilled, and the finished goods are bottled, boxed and labelled.
Corn gives a cosmetics house three of its raw materials: ethanol fermented from corn makes a clean perfume base, corn starch is a common body powder that replaced talc in many products, and corn oil is a soft plant oil for balms. Scented soap, perfume, powders and balms are sold to retailers, gift shops and market stalls.