A Short History of Soap and a Recipe, Involving World War II, Proctor and Gamble, Joske's Department Store, and My Grandmother

Homemade Soap, Ready to Cut

When my mother was a child, during the peak of WWII rationing, my grandmother made their soap in their backyard in San Antonio. For that, Grandmother needed lots of cheap, or better yet, free, fat so she sent my mom and her sisters to the butcher to get pails of  rancid lard. Then she rendered and cleaned the lard in a huge pot. 


Soap is easy to make but lye is nothing to be haphazard with. All the usual cautions apply: Wear safety gear. I arm up like a 16th century samurai: long sleeves, long pants, closed shoes, hair back, elbow length heavy rubber gloves (make sure they're well-fitted so hands will be nimble!). I even wear a mask while I'm pouring the lye. I've never read any directions that require a mask, but I always wonder if breathing lye powder or fumes is all that good an idea. Also, keep vinegar handy, to neutralize lye just in case an accident occurs. Finally, keep children and pets well-away while making soap.

I've always loved this story because it so perfectly encapsulated who my grandmother was:

1) She loved free. Rancid fat? Free? I'll take it, is what my grandmother would have said.

2) She was a fanatic about cleaning. She worked as a maid through my mom's childhood, (for the Joske family, of Joske's Department Store at one time) but that didn't stop her from coming home in the evenings and scrubbing every damn thing she could find. 

3) Grandmother liked to keep kids busy. For most of my childhood, she ran a summer work camp for grandkids that involved, among other things, scrubbing the tile grout between the stove and the wall with a tooth brush.

So I guess I'm not surprised that WWII rationing did not slow her love affair with soap down a single little bit.

My mother never made soap when I was growing up. She did not render fat or build a fire in our backyard. She was done with all that by the time she was raising kids and she never romanticized poverty or hard work. Also, there was no rationing going on. 

I come from unknown generations of hardscrabble, dirt poor, food insecure people on both sides of my family. I don't romanticize poverty either, at all. I know it's anxiety-producing and crushing and hard in ways large and small. And though in my adulthood, I've escaped that kind of poverty, something makes me run my fingers through these stories, again and again. And something in me finds comfort in reproducing these hardscrabble recipes.

My own soap making does not involved rendering rancid fat. I most often use the cheap, largely inedible fat of our time: hydrogenated vegetable shortening. This is an historically appropriate choice, because German chemist, Edwin Cuno Kayser, invented what came to be called Crisco, as a substitute for the animal fats traditionally used in soap making while he was working with Proctor and Gamble. I've used other, very fine oils for soap -- olive, avocado, coconut, apricot seed, and so on -- but hydrogenated vegetable oil makes a beautiful, gentle all purpose soap.

By the way, this is a huge recipe. It's easily enough to last a year, and give some away too.

The basic ingredients are

(2) 3 LB cans vegetable shortening

12 oz lye

24 oz water

Follow basic soap making methods:

1) melt vegetable shortening in non-reactive pot (I use stainless steel.)

2) add lye to water, in non-reactive container (I use a pyrex bowl with pour spout.) This bears repeating:; don't add the lye to the water; don't add the water to the lye. You will make a big, big mess if you do it the wrong way around. So measure out the water, then measure out the lye in a separate container. Then, add the lye to the water, being careful not to splash.

3) when fats and water are about the same temp (between 95-100 degrees F), pour the lye water slowly, in a thin, steady stream into the fat. 

4) stir, stir, stir, in gentle figure 8 pattern, until soap traces, using non-reactive spoon or immersion blender. This recipe traces quickly, especially if you use an immersion blender, so have the mold ready to go.

5) pour into molds, wrap in towels to retain heat. I use a large plastic shoe box. Sometimes I remember to line it with wax paper for easier unmolding. You want the soap to cool slowly, so store it in a reasonably warm place, if you can. I store mine in my laundry room.

6) when soap has hardened (24-48 hours), remove from mold and cut into bars

8) cure for 2 weeks or so before using (I use a cake stand, to take up less space and allow for air flow.) A longer cure means a harder, longer-lasting bar.

These are very broad stroke directions. If you've never made soap before, you'll want to read up first. A great book for novices is The Complete Soapmaker, by Norma Coney. 

That said, I've never had a single mishap with lye or soap. Not even a minor burn or scratch. Which is not something I can say about any other cooking or household task. Maybe it's the National Emergency level of safety cautions I take for lye -- as opposed to the haphazard approach I take to most parts of life.

Speaking of haphazard, this soap is so foolproof that I sometimes measure by volume instead of by weight. Don't do that! Seriously, don't. Every book on soap making says you absolutely cannot measure by volume, or gigantic disasters will occur. And it's no big deal to just use a scale and measure by weight. I have a postal scale I use. It was inexpensive, and is a generally handy device, which has paid for its purchase many times over. So there's never, ever any reason to measure by volume.

Still, sometimes I do it, as I did this time. I don't know why. Just some kind of contrarian impulse. The worst thing that's ever happened is once my soap came out a bit soft. But still, listen to the experts and never, never measure by volume.