The History of Artisan Soap
By Rebecca Gallagher
Handmade soap comes in many forms, whether it be melt & pour or glycerin soap, Castile Soap, cold process, Marseille Soap, milled, Aleppo Soap, rebatched, African Black Soap, hot process, Avocado Soap, fluid hot process, Coconut Soap, room-temperature process; the list goes on and on. In the beginning all soap starts out the same, unless you are talking about synthetic detergent soap, which is a different blog altogether.
So! All (natural) soap starts with a mixture of oils, water and lye. The chemical reaction when they are mixed is what creates soap. It’s as simple as that! So, if it’s so simple, why isn’t everyone making their own still? Well here’s where things can get tricky.
Back in the day soap was made with ash, water and leftover oil from cooking and chunks of fat from butchering. It was made in a great big cauldron over a fire outside, because let’s face it, it was really hot and stinky. They didn’t have lye like we do today, so they didn’t have any exact measurement they could make. Today we have calculators that do that fun work for us. So they would take a bunch of water and pour it over ash they had collected from their fires. This made it even harder to control, because guess what different ashes have different concentrations of the chemical lye that turns the oil into that soap!
In theory if you had only 1 type of wood that you collected ashes of, you could just weigh how much ash you used, how much water, and zippo you could have more consistent batches. (I don’t think they did much of that at the beginning, lol) So in goes the bunch of water over a bunch of ashes, then they let the ashes sink to the bottom (God only knows how long that would take) then they have to pour off the now lye water so they can use it. Of course, it’s all dirty looking, it still has ash particles in it, yum! A lot of the time they just left the ashes or potash right in the soap. This is called Black Soap.
And then…. if they don’t have just leftover fat from cooking, that means they have to render out the oil from the fat., which means another cauldron over another fire watched by another person. That person has to cook down the fat until as much oil as can be is extracted out of the fat. Then you must fish out all the solid pieces of fat, skin, gristle, etc. left over. Plus, mind you if it’s before refrigeration then the fat is most likely rancid too. Fun Fun Huh? Don’t all volunteer for that one all at once now…
So now you’ve got your oil and your lye mix, you can just put it together and voila, soap, right? Wrong. Now they would have to check the concentration of the lye water by seeing if it will hold up an egg… that’s right an egg. Who thought of this. So you start by putting some of that lye water in a glass and then you carefully put in an egg, meanwhile being careful not to splash, because lye is caustic, meaning it can eat through your skin! If you see it suspended at the top then it is strong enough for laundry soap, if it is suspended in the middle of the liquid then it is more mild, good for washing your skin.
Now that that is done, they would mix the two together in the big cauldron with a big wooden paddle. And this is where the stirring begins. Without having done this before you may think that this wouldn’t take long at this point. But again you’d be wrong. Making soap in this way can take hours and hours and hours more. It all depends on the types of fat you are using. Even with heat which speeds the process up greatly it would take a long time. These days we emulsify, or process the oil and water together with a blender before cooking. When the fat and oils are not mixed together into a homogenous solution, it comes together into soap particles at all different rates, by stirring it you help them to run into one another and stick together. They would just keep stirring and stirring while it bubbled away, eventually it would thicken and they could move on to the next step. Below is a description from those times.
The following recipe from the Secretes of Alexis of Piemont mentions the correct proportions of lye to oil for a successful soap boil “vnto three pound of the saide lie, you muste haue one pound of oile” and also stresses not to boil but to simmer the soap; for a long, long time.
To make black Sope for clothes, with all the signes and tokens that it giueth and maketh in beiling.
[…]Use 3 pounds of egg bearing lye to 1 pound of oil, pour the oil in and stir and mix well. Do this in the evening so that the infusion can stand overnight. In the morning start to simmer it, for seven to eight hours; if it is over 100 pounds simmer ten hours or more. When it starts to simmer and rise up a lot, take it from the fire and stir it well until it starts to go down again. Keep stirring so it does not get burned to the bottom. When you use a cauldron leave a hand width of space because the soap rises and swells in cooking and oil would be lost. The more it is stirred and the oils incorporate well with the lye, the sooner it simmers. When it has simmered for about eight or nine hours it is time to take samples and check. Make sure to have some first and second lye ready as needed. When it has boiled until the right time you shall see it become thick, and make long and thick bubbles when simmering. To take a sample, take a little with a spoon and put it on a small earthenware dish and let it cool. Then cut it with a little stick and if it closes again it is a sign it has cooked enough; if it does not close, it is not finished, so keep simmering it [this is reversed]. Take many samples and check. [..]
The seconde part of the Secretes of Master Alexis of Piemont by Girolamo Ruscelli, 1560.
What they don’t tell you in that excerpt is that you then need to pour it into some sort of vessel and allow it to firm up. These days we have specialized molds, and I’m sure back then the professionals did too, but at home you made do with what you already had. It could be mitered wooden boxes, or bowls or you could pour it out on the floor like they do in Aleppo! After it is firmed up, you need to cut it into manageable pieces and then cure them. Curing is the process of allowing the moisture to evaporate out of the bars. However, we now know that there is also something else going on.
Over time there is a network of crystals that are formed within the soap. They are microscopic and the longer you allow the soap to do this, the better the soap will be. Each bars formula determines how much time this will take, some oils are done relatively quickly, in an about 6-8 weeks, others can take 6 months to even a year. Curing carefully creates a bar that is mild, has good bubbles and lasts through the showering and bathing it is needed for. Too short of a cure and your skin could feel too dry, your bar could melt quickly during washing, and you could even have less or just not good long lasting bubbles.
Curing in the old days could take a long, long time. Olive oil soaps are famously cured for at least a full year. Most at home soap would be ready right away, but just like today the longer you let it sit, the better it got, no matter the oils. These days many of the oils we use in soap have a shelf life of about 1 year, so it is best to use your soaps not too long after you buy them. And keep in mind, scent evaporates over time, so the longer you keep the soap, the less its scent holds!
Back then since their oils may not have been all that fresh in the first place, homemade soap may not have smelled too nice, but there were professionals in that time too, and they made soap everyday, so not only were their oils fresh, they did do a fragrance of a sort. In the early days they would grate the soap and add herbs to it and then wet it and press it into a ball. You could buy premade soap from a professional soap maker and grate it at home and add herbs to your preference. Contrary to popular belief, even back then enjoyed being clean, they just didn’t do it each and every day. Their clothes however being made of such fine materials were not always good at holding up to washing, so while bodies may have been clean clothing may have been a bit stinky!
Nowadays most people still buy from professionals, some from big box stores selling detergent as well as oil based natural soaps, or from smaller but still professional sources. Although you should always be careful of your source, most soap out there today if safe to use without much thought. We have wonderful scientific improvements in the soaping field, from purified lye, to fine oils and butters from around the world to scientifically produced essential oils and fragrances from exotic plants. While some factors like price may hold you back the sky is really the limit to what you can create now!
