Soap Making                                                       
                         by Priscilla A. Maine

This cake of lye soap, was made by the author in honor of the characters in her historical novel, Angels Unaware. click book to order Visit Priscilla's Website

She had babies to bathe, dishes to wash, clothes to boil, and floors to scrub. To tackle those chores she needed a cleansing agent. Unlike today's homemakers, our great grandmothers didn't have a choice between using a liquid, cream, gel, powder, perfumed, anti-bacterial, sudsing, or nonsudsing cleanser. Nor did she use a different product for individual jobs.She used the same cleansing power to shampoo her hair that she used to scour her pots and she made it herself.

Soap making was a lengthy and time-consuming procedure which started weeks or even months before the actual process. When a farm animal was butchered and dressed out all the hard fat was trimmed from the lean meat on the carcass. That suet was then rendered into tallow, a liquefied form of fat. The process of rendering took hours and was usually done outside. After building a hot fire beneath a cast-iron wash pot the slabs and chunks of hard fat were cooked until they floated on top of the fatty substance.That crisp residue, known as cracklings, was skimmed from the melted lard and saved for eating or flavoring cornbread. She now had the base for her soap.

The other ingredient she needed also took planning and preparation ahead of time. The wood ashes from both her cookstove and fireplace were collected in a leach vessel, usually a wooden barrel. Water was passed through the ashes to extract lye, a strong caustic alkaline fluid rich in potassium carbonates. This compound formed the cleansing portion of the soap. Combining those two ingredients, our early ancestors created their own all-purpose cleanser lye soap. It was a process that took several hours of cooking and constant stirring. If she had the time or the inclination she added dried herbs or wildflowers to her mixture just before pouring it up. But mostly it was left as a plain, drab cake of unsophisticated cleansing power. A mold could be as simple as a wooden box lined with corn husks. After the mixture set it was cut into squares and put aside to cure for several weeks.

Though familiar with the process of making lye soap as described above, I have found a simpler method. And believe it or not I make soap on a regular basis. If you would like to try your hand here is a recipe my great grandmother gave me. Use CAUTION, Lye is a caustic substance and will burn your skin. Use only glass, crock, or stainless steel mixing bowls and wooden spoons for stirring. Never use tin or aluminum. Line a cardboard box with wax paper for molds (I also save and use the trays cookies come in).

To clean fat or drippings strain through a single thickness of paper toweling. Mix fat and borax, then mix lye and water and add to fat mixture slowly, stirring constantly 10 to 20 minutes until honeycomb-like texture. Pour soap into prepared mold. Cover and let stand 24 hours, remove from mold and let age 2 weeks in a dry place. You may add perfume to the soap, but use only oil-based scents. Alcohol-based fragrances will separate from the soap. NOTE: I have been known to fudge and use my electric mixer (with stainless steel beaters) to blend and shorten the stirring time. Even with this modern method you get an idea of what it took for the pioneer woman to keep her family and home clean.

Copyright ©1999 Priscilla Maine. All rights reserved.
This article first appeared in the January/February/March 1999
issue of Calico Trails. Reprinted by permission of Priscilla Maine.