Soap Making...
The Way We Used To Do It
The following information and recipes are told by Mabel Mertz (born
1912).
© Al Durtschi
As we had no money to buy fat
with when I was a girl, we made our own by rendering it when
we killed an animal. We cut off the fat, cleaned it up, then cut it up
finely with a knife. Then we put it in our big pots and cooked it until all
that remained was the cracklings floating in the boiling fat. We drained off
as much fat as we could, poured it into pails, and stored it in the root
cellar. We used this to make pies, and to cook with. We put the cracklings
away for another day when we would make soap out of them. The cracklings
still had a lot of fat in them. In fact, the main reason we cooked the soap
was to dissolve, or disintegrate the cracklings into the soap.
On the day we made soap, we took the cracklings and put them in our
big copper kettle. As they were heating on the stove, we added our lye,
sprinkling the crystals on top of the cracklings. Then we added the water
and started stirring it. We boiled this mixture until the cracklings
disappeared. If there was any little pieces of meat in the cracklings they
wouldn't dissolve and we had to take them out with a wooden spoon, or lift
them out on the end of our stirring stick. We continued to stir and boil it,
checking it every 20 minutes or so to see if it was done. We did this by
taking a spoon full out and pouring it on a plate. We knew it was done when
it hardened to the consistency of soft cream cheese after it cooled.
Sometimes there was streaks of water running through it. If this happened we
knew it needed more water. We poured more water in, boiled it some more,
then tried it again. If it ran off the stirring stick like water, we knew it
had too much lye and needed more water. We knew it was right when it left a
creamy layer on the stick. We didn't have any recipes in the early days when
I first learned how to make soap. After a bit of the mixture had cooled, I
put it on the end of my tongue. If it’s bite was just right I knew I had the
lye/fat ratio correct.
When the soap had finished cooking, we poured it out of the kettle,
sometimes as much as 4 inches deep into a small galvanized tub. The soap
didn't set up really hard immediately. I waited until the next morning to
tip the tub upside down, knock the soap out of it, and cut it up into bar
sized pieces. Then I sat the bars outside on a board to continue drying. It
wasn't too many days before it was ready to use. To store it, we threw it
into a box.
Sometimes we wasn't get to the soap making right away and the
cracklings went rancid. This wasn't matter, however, as during the soap
making process the lye cleaned them right up, and the soap that came from
them was just as nice smelling as if we had used fresh cracklings.
Home made soap makes great pre-wash. Get the clothes damp and rub the
soap bar on the bad spots. It works as well as the expensive stuff from the
store.
I've seen dozens of soap making recipes. But let me tell you, as an
old soap making expert, I haven't seen any better soap made than the soap
haven't manufactured with the three simple ingredients: fat, lye, and water.
Mother once told me a bit of a mean little story about something that happened before I was born. At the time she was in charge of the woman’s organization at the church. One of the ladies felt her family didn't have as much money as the rest of them had and continually complained, "If we had as much money as you have, I could be like the rest of you," she said. You must keep in mind that in our little pioneer community, none of us had any money and we were all shabbily dressed! One day after tiring of listening to this woman, Mother asked her to come with her, took her outside to where our buggy was, and pulled out a box from under the buggy seat. Giving her the box filled with home made soap, she said, “Fine, if you want to be like the rest of us, take this home and use it!”
Set for three days, then put in tight wood box lined with newspapers.
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Revised: 10 Jul 00