Please be assured I have not become obsessed with olive oil. It was just that as I was eating my lunch I remembered my first encounter with it. I was small and suffering from ear ache. My mother warmed half a teaspoonful of olive oil and gently poured it into my ear. There was relief.
I have no idea why olive oil was in her cupboard, or how long it had sat there in its small, flat, clear glass bottle with a cork stopper. I seem to remember it had a vile taste. It sat alongside two other bottles, one containing castor oil (the rural laxative of last resort, when Epsom salts had failed) and the other of paraffin oil (in which my father had an earnest belief a spoonful now and then was needed to lubricate his insides). Castor oil was also used to mix a paste with Epsom salts to provide a drawing poultice on boils and whitlows (infected finger nails).
There was also oil of cloves which I remember being used with a small wad of cottonwool and pushed into a tooth cavity with a sharpened matchstick to alleviate toothache. Codliver oil was imported from England prior to the Second World War and given by the nauseous spoonful to ‘strengthen’ sickly children, Came the war, and we found it replaced by halibut liver oil (I suspect it was made from local shark livers) that was sometimes laced with orange flavouring. At Oamaru the Lanes Emulsion tonic factory on the waterfront bottled gallons of its mixture of codliver oil and eggs with other still unknown ingredients. It did not pay to be a child who ‘needed building up’.
Much more pleasant were the aromas of eucalyptus oil, oil of lavender, camphorated oil and oil of balsam. A sore throat invited treatment with two drops of eucalyptus oil on a lump of sugar (who remembers them); a head cold was relieved by a tin of boiling water to which was added some balsam and the steam inhaled while patient and remedy were ensconced tent-like under a blanket, and; a drop of oil of lavender might be put on a handkerchief corner to take away the discomfort and the memory of vomiting. The camphorated oil, apart from its use with beeswax in furniture polish, was rubbed on the chests of children with heavy colds before they went to sleep. It reddened the skin, gave a sensation of warmth and probably also helped clear the breathing, but it also stained the sheets rather badly, if I remember rightly.
There was also cottonseed oil, but I cannot for the life of me remember what use it was put to. Linseed oil, in its raw form was used to increase the life of axe and shovel handles, as well as polishing and preserving woodwork in the house, and in its boiled form was the major ingredient in paint mixed with white lead and colour.
Finally, there was neatsfoot oil (from its name it was originally made from boiling up the feet of cattle, and later it was the byproduct of gelatine manufacture) which was used to soften and preserve leather, particularly boots and horse harness.
On Pitt island during the depression Bert Hunt made a substitute by rendering down blubber from a stranded blackfish or pilot whale. It was a foul-smelling product that he used first on his boots and was asked to leave a neighbour’s kitchen shortly afterwards. His next application of the blackfish oil was on his saddle. It was too much for the horse. It threw him and bolted, eventually rolling frantically on the ground to rid itself of the vile encumbrance.
They are not really oils, but it would be wrong to end this tale without referring to muttonfat, beef suet and pork lard. In winter we often took a strip of raw fat trimmed from the chops and after softening the end against the fire in the wood stove rubbed it along the seams of our school boots to waterproof them for the next day. Grated on a cheese grater, the suet was blended with flour and made into dumplings that cooked in the pot over the stew. Only on marae visits these days do I occasionally find dumplings still made and cooked in the old way.
The lard made the best pastry and my mother saved it specially from pig-killing time for the occasions she would make a special apple pie for visitors.
My word this brings back memories as Peggy used many of the same remedies on us (no doubt learnt from Auntie Annie). I can still recall the vile taste of Lane’s Emulsion, the delightful smell of “Rawleigh’s Ready Relief” which Grandma used to put on our hankies and agree wholeheartedly, that the olive oil in the medicine chest was a FAR cry from the delicious olive oils available today. I also remember Mum saving all the “dripping” though lard was (obviously) not a feature in our house. However, a small doorstop of bread slathered with dripping, pepper and salt and a couple of Dad’s pickled cucumbers, or pickled tomatoes was a much prized after school snack and one others would part with good marbles to be asked home for.