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Historical formulations* for soap usually were published in one of two formats: trade manuals or domestic manuals. Obviously, these publications are directed at two very different audiences, and this division illustrates a great divide between the two types of soapmaker. On the one hand, there is the professional. He (it is almost never a woman) is a businessman who is shrewdly trying to manufacture the best product and to achieve the maximum profit for his fine work. The soaps that he produces are, (in the nineteenth-century) purchased largely by the upper classes, and usually in urban areas or by mail. On the other hand is the domestic manufacturer. She (it is almost always a woman) produces soaps for her family's needs, for their bodies, and clothes. She is usually of the lower classes and/or rurally located. While she is also concerned with producing a fine product, the domestic process is messy and somewhat dangerous.

As modern soapmakers, most of us lie somewhere between the historical professional and domestic manufacturers. Many of us make our soap to sell, and have customers willing to pay luxury prices for our luxury creations. However, most of us do not produce products in the quantities of an industrial model. We represent a very modern concept in our creation of "handmade indulgences." In a review of historical publications on soapmaking, the modern soapmaker can confirm the continuance of basic technique, and understand the role that soap and soapmaking have played in recent history.

Domestic manuals proliferated in America soon after the first settlers arrived. The removal of women from the learning environments of their extended families almost necessitated the creation of this publication genre, instructing new housekeepers in the methods and responsibilities necessary for the management of a household. The transient nature of early New World populations encouraged this formalized approach to home economics education.

Domestic manuals started as "receipt books," with formulas for bread, sausage, pickles, wine, tonics or other medicines, cleaning solutions, dyestuffs, preserves, ink, and all manner of prepared meats, vegetables, confections, and grains. Many of these manuals grew to include formulas for behavior, including table etiquette, correspondence, management of servants, treatment for trauma, parliamentary procedure, and child-rearing. Many include additional instruction in topics such as needlework, interior decorating, social policy (e.g. temperance, abolition), animal husbandry, and childbirth. Imagine a young wife, the usual intended market for these books, thusly prepared, accompanying her husband to settle the frontier.

Many, if not most, of these books include some manner of information on the subject of soapmaking. The subject is, with few exceptions, presented without mention of coloring, fragrance, additives, or any of the "niceties" or details with which the modern soapmaker is concerned. It is apparent that soapmaking was seldom more than just another chore. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that bathing itself was something of a chore at the time--procuring so much water from a well, without plumbing, as we know it!

What can we, modern soapmakers, learn from the reading of these old receipts? They describe the most basic formulation for soap, and force us to remember that fragrances, herbs, and exotic oils are luxuries rather than requirements. We can marvel at our sophistication, in raising this simple substance to the level of an artful experience, both in creation and in use. We can also be thankful that our craft no longer requires the unattractive components of rendering meat drippings or trying to float an egg in lye.

Elliott, Sarah A. Mrs. Elliott's Housewife. Oxford, NC: 1869. Hard Soap Pour four gallons of boiling water over six pounds of sal-soda and three pounds of unslacked lime, stir it well and let it settle until perfectly clear; let it stand all night. When clear, strain the water off and put six pounds of nice grease with it and boil for two hours, stirring it most of the time. If it does not seem thin enough pour another gallon of water over the lime, stir it and drain it off, and add a little at the time it is wanted, to the boiling mixture. Try it by putting a little on a plate to cool, and if thick as you wish stir in a handful of salt just before taking it from the fire. Have a large tub well soaked to keep the soap from sticking. Let it remain until solid and you will have forty pounds of nice white soap. Soft Soap Put ten pounds of potash in half barrel, next day add twelve pounds grease, stir it well and then add one gallon of boiling water. Add the same quantity boiling water every day until the barrel is full, stirring it all the time. If you wish to make less, use three pounds of grease and two and a half pounds of potash. Common Soap Save your kitchen grease, melt and strain it, put it in a large iron pot and slowly add the lye from good wood ashes (oak or hickory is the best), cook it until it ropes, stirring often with a wooden paddle. If you wish it thick, add a handful of salt just as you take it from the fire and stir it well in. Soap with Potash One pound of white rock potash makes fifteen pounds of white hard soap or a half barrel of soft. Dissolve one pound of the potash in one gallon of boiling water; add five pounds of hot, melted, clean grease, stirring it quickly until it is smooth and clear, then pour it in a box mould. Another way is to dissolve one pound of the potash in three and a half gallons of boiling water, and add five pounds of grease, boiling and stirring until the grease and lye are combined (nearly 10 hours), add a little salt and it will bring all the soap to the top. Then dip it out in a mould or box and cut it in bars when cold. In boiling it may be necessary to add water as it is evaporated. New grease requires longer boiling than old.

To make yellow soap, dissolve two pounds of resin in the grease before adding the lye, and put rosemary, sassafras, or Bergamot to scent it.

Child, Lydia Marie. The American Frugal Housewife. Boston, 1832. Soap In the city, I believe, it is better to exchange ashes and grease for soap; but in the country, I am certain, it is good economy to make one's own soap. If you burn wood, you can make your own lye; but the ashes of coal is not worth much. Bore small holes in the bottom of a barrel, place four bricks around, and fill the barrel with ashes. Wet the ashes well, but not enough to drop; let it soak thus three or four days; then pour a gallon of water in every hour or two, for a day or more, and let it drop into a pail or tub beneath. Keep it dripping till the color of the lye shows the strength is exhausted. If your lye is not strong enough, you must fill your barrel with fresh ashes, and let the lye run through it. Some people take a barrel without any bottom, and lay sticks and straw across to prevent the ashes from falling through. To make a barrel of soap, it will require about five or six bushels of ashes, with at least four quarts of unslacked stone lime; if slacked, double the quantity.

When you have drawn off a part of the lye, put the lime (whether slack or not) into two or three pails of boiling water, and add it to the ashes, and let it drain through.

It is the practice of some people, in making soap, to put the lime near the bottom of the ashes when they first set it up; but the lime becomes like mortar, and the lye does not run through, so as to get the strength of it, which is very important in making soap, as it contracts the nitrous salts which collect in ashes, and prevents the soap from coming, (as the saying is.) Old ashes are very apt to be impregnated with it.

Three pounds of grease should be put into a pailful of lye. The great difficulty in making soap 'come' originates in want of judgment about the strength of the lye. One rule may be safely trusted-If your lye will bear up an egg, or a potato, so that you can see a piece of the surface as big as ninepence, it is just strong enough. If it sink below the top of the lye, it is too weak, and will never make soap; if it is buoyed up half way, the lye is too strong; and that is just as bad. A bit of quick-lime, thrown in while the lye and grease are boiling together, is of service. When the soap becomes thick and ropy, carry it down cellar in pails and empty it into a barrel.

Cold soap is less trouble, because it does not need to boil; the sun does the work of fire. The lye must be prepared and tried in the usual way. The grease must be tried out, and strained from the scraps. Two pounds of grease (instead of three) must be used to a pailful; unless the weather is very sultry, the lye should be hot when put to the grease. It should stand in the sun, and be stirred every day. If it does not begin to look like soap in the course of five or six days, add a little hot lye to it; if this does not help it, try whether it be
grease that it wants. Perhaps you will think cold soap wasteful, because the grease must be strained; but if the scraps are boiled thoroughly in strong lye, the grease will all float upon the surface, and nothing be lost.

Randolph, Mary. The Virginia Housewife. Philadelphia, 1860. To prepare Cosmetic Soap for Washing the Hands Take a pound of castile, or any other nice old soap; scrape it in small pieces, and put it on the fire with a little water-stir it till it becomes a smooth paste, pour it into a bowl, and when cold, add some lavender water, or essence of any kind-beat it with a silver spoon until well mixed, thicken it with corn meal, and keep it in small pots closely covered-for the admission of air will make the soap hard. To Make Soap Put on the fire any quantity of lye you choose that is strong enough to bear an egg-to each gallon, add three quarters of a pound of clean grease: boil it very fast, and stir it frequently-a few hours will suffice to make it good soap. When you find by cooling a little on a plate that it is a thick jelly, and no grease appears, put in salt in the proportion of one pint to three gallons-let it boil a few minutes, and pour it in tubs to cool-(should the soap be thin, add a little water to that in the plate, stir it well, and by that means ascertain how much water is necessary for the whole quantity; very strong lye will require water to thicken it, after the incorporation is complete; this must be done before the salt is added.) Next day, cut out the soap, melt it, and cool it again; this takes out all the lye, and keeps the soap from shrinking when dried. A strict conformity to these rules, will banish the lunar bugbear, which has so long annoyed soap makers. Should cracknels be used, there must be one pound to each gallon. Kitchen grease should be clarified in a quantity of water, or the salt will prevent its incorporating with the lye. Soft soap is made in the same manner, only omitting the salt. It may also be made by putting the lye and grease together in exact proportions, and placing it under the influence of a hot sun for eight or ten days, stirring it well four or five times a day.

Trade manuals were published by and for professional manufacturers. They are like "text books," with a few basic, precise formulations, but more emphatically, a discussion of the characteristics of component parts with discussions of method and combination, and results of experimentation.

Demonstrating the long-standing close relationship between soap and candle making, many of these publications contain information on both crafts. For example, one book is entitled, A Technical Treatise on Soap and Candles; with a glance at the industry of fats and oils (Cristiani, R. S.. A Technical Treatise on Soap and Candles, Philadelphia: 1881.), and the authorship is attributed, "R. S. Cristiani, Chemist." The table of contents shows the book separated into two parts, "Soap" and "Candles." The soap part is divided into the following sections:

Materials used in the Manufacture of Soaps
The Recovery of Offal and other Refuse, Fats, and Greases
The Adulteration of Fatty Bodies
The Chemical Equivalents Applicable to Soap
Saponification-Theoretical, Chemical, and Practical Alkalimetry
The Application of Soaps
The Establishment of a Soap Factory with the Necessary Plant
The Fabrication of Soaps
New Soaps by New Methods
Soap Analysis
Remelting of Soaps
Miscellaneous Useful Soaps
Toilet Soaps
Toilet Soaps by the Cold Process
Miscellaneous Toilet and Medicated Soaps, with Formulas
Manipulation of Soaps; Machinery and appliances, Perfuming, Coloring, Finishing, etc.
Volatile (Essential) Oils, and some other Materials used for the Perfuming of Soaps.

Half-Palm Soap

White tallow	900 pounds
Palm oil	400 pounds
Cocoa-nut oil	200 pounds
Yellow rosin	100 pounds

The proportions of these substances are not fixed, and vary according to the uses for which the soap is destined. In England this soap is prepared with common tallows and an addition of rosin. In France where it is used only for toilet purposes, it is better attended to, and its purification is more complete. The above formulas five a soap of superior quality, and the use of which is very advantageous in the preparation of toilet soaps. The palm oil may be bleached or not, but must always be purified.

Pasting.-By a gentle heat, melt the tallow and oils in a kettle of a capacity of at least 2633 litres (696 gallons). When melted, pour into the kettle 378 litres (100 gallons) of new lye at 8° or 10° B.; heat slowly and gradually, stirring from time to time, and when the ebullition begins, moderate the action of the heat, to avoid too rapid a reaction in the mass. After continuing the ebullition for about four hours, pour little by little on the paste from thirty-five to fifty fallons of new lye at 15° or 18°, and incorporate it by stirring for fifteen minutes. This being done, continue to boil for three hours, or rather until the paste appears quite homogeneous and has acquired a certain consistency. Then a new quantity of thirty-five gallons of lye at 20° may be added, and after a new ebullition of two hours, the first operation is finished.

Separation.-The pasting being finished, the heat is stopped off; and after a few hours' rest, pour into the kettle a limpid lye of coction, i.e. salted lye at 20° to 25°, or a new lye containing salt in solution. While one man pours in the lye, another stirs the paste all the time. When the quantity of salt lye introduced into the kettle is sufficient, the soap is transformed into small grains, and the lye separates abundantly. After resting five or sic hours, draw off the lye. About two-thirds of the lyes which have been used are drawn off; they have a yellowish color, and mark when cold from 15° to 16°. The pasty mess left in the kettle has a fine yellow color.

Coction.--The coction of this soap is very little different from that of pure palm-oil soap. Like the latter, it is effected with new and caustic lyes of soda marking 25° or 28°. When the operation is done in two services, lyes at 19° or 20° are used for the first service, and lyes at 25° or 28° for the second. When, on the contrary, the coction is finished in a single operation, lyes at 25° are used. This last process is the quickest and most economical. The lyes being drawn off; pour into the kettle from 567 to 661.5 litres (150-175 gallons) of new lye at 25°; heat, and give a gentle boiling, for in the first hours the soap dilates and swells considerably. Its surface is then covered with an abundant scum, which gradually disappears only as the coction progresses. It is necessary to stir from time to time during the whole of the operation. This agitation is very important, for it accelerates the coction of the soap. When the soap has been gently boiled for three or four hours, the heat may be increased without fear of burning the soap. Generally, after eight or ten hours of ebullition with lye at 25° the soap is completely boiled. The scum has entirely disappeared, or there remains very little on the surface of the soap, which then has the form of hard and dry grains. When these grains are pressed between the fingers, they form thin and hard scales. The rosin has been added at the beginning of the coction, so as to saponify it completely. When the soap is sufficiently boiled, which is known when it forms scales, stop off the heat, let it rest a few hours, draw off the lye, and proceed to the fitting.

Fitting.--Two operations are necessary to completely refine the soap. The first has for its object to soften the grains of soap, and to separate the greater part of the free alkali and saline matters; the second has for its object to completely dissolve the grains of soap and precipitate the coloring and heterogeneous substances, and the excess of caustic lye it contains.
First Liquefaction.--When the lye has been drawn off, pour into the kettle 378 litres (100 gallons) of new lye at 8° or 9°, and heat gradually until boiling, being careful to stir the mixture well. When the grains of soap have become soft, cease the stirring; and, to complete the precipitation of the strong lye contained in the soap, boil for five or six hours, or even eight hours. As by such a long ebullition the grain of the soap has a tendency to be formed again, pour from time to time into the kettle a few pails of lye at 2° and even pure water. It is, however, necessary that the soap should be always separated from the lye; this is ascertained by pouring some into a glass, and if so, the lye precipitates at the bottom of the glass. It is important and essential to have, during the whole operation, the lye separated from the soap, to obtain the separation of the strong lye mixed with the paste. When this result is obtained, stop off the heat and cover the kettle. Let it rest six hours, then introduce the soap into another kettle and proceed to a second liquefaction.

Second Liquefaction.--Whatever has been the care taken in the first liquefaction, the soap has not been completely deprived of all its causticity-it always contains a certain quantity of caustic alkali, which must be eliminated to obtain a pure product. This is the object of the second liquefaction. But to obtain all the good results this operation may produce, substitute for the caustic lyes of soda ash, a non caustic solution of crystals of soda. By its extreme purity and the absence of causticity, this solution completely purifies the soap, depriving it of all its caustic parts. Pour into the new kettle about 136 litres (36 gallons) of a solution of crystals of soda at 4 1/2° or 5°, and heat to a temperature near the boiling point. Then introduce the soap from the first kettle into the second, being careful not to draw any of the sub-lye. This being done, boil the mixture gently for four or five hours, being careful to stir from time to time. By the ebullition with weak lyes (aqueous solution of crystals of soda), the soap entirely loses its granular appearance, and becomes syrupy, fluid, and homogeneous. As in the first liquefaction, a scum is formed on the surface of the soap, and this scum is more considerable on account of the greater dilation of the paste. As by evaporation the lye concentrates, add from time to time very small portions of water, so as to keep the paste always fluid. The heterogeneous coloring and saline impurities will be precipitated by resting. The soap must not contain too much water, for in this case it would be too long in hardening. The signs by which it is ascertained that the paste is sufficiently liquefied, are manifested by slightly blackish coloration which proves that the black soap has been precipitated to the bottom of the kettle, and is brought up in the mass by the ebullition. When these characteristics have been observed, the operation is finished; stop off the heat, cover the kettle and let it rest eighteen or twenty hours. By resting, the black soap precipitates with the lye, and the pure soap is between it and the scum. After eighteen or twenty hours rest, uncover the kettle and remove the scum on the surface of the soap. Remove the pure soap and introduce it into the frames, passing it through a metallic wire sieve; all the foreign bodies in the soap remain on the sieve:-- When all the pure soap has been introduced into the frames stir it well till cold; this manipulation is necessary to make it homogeneous. By operating as we have indicated, the above quantities of fatty matters generally give:--

Soap-scum	from 64 to 73 kilog.	141 lbs. To 161 lbs.
Pure soap	from 954 to 982 kilog.	2100 lbs. To 2160 lbs.
Black soap	from 227 to 273 kilog.	500 lbs. To 600 lbs.

The scum and black soaps are mixed in the next operation or used for a common soap. The half-palm soap has a very pure yellow color when manufactured with good materials. It has also a good odor, and is useful for making many kinds of soaps, such as honey, glycerine, marshmallow, etc.

Old Brown Windsor Soap

This popular soap, when properly prepared, is made in the following manner: Take of boiled palm soap and half-palm soap each 50 pounds; put in the stripper, and make into thin shavings, and spread upon sheets of strong paper to dry; when dry, melt in a marine bath with a small portion of an aromatic water, and when it is again hard enough proceed to cut it up and strip it as before, drying it again and remelting and adding caramel to color; and after the third operation add the following perfume to the 100 pounds:--

Oil of bergamot	4 ounces
Oil of caraway	2 ounces
Oil of cassia	2 ounces
Oil of Lavender	8 ounces
Oil of cloves	1 ounce
Oil of petit grain	1 ounce

Mould or cut into small square cakes, and wrap them in a neat paper wrapper.

Brown Windsor soap owed its fine emollient properties to the amount of labor employed in its manufacture, for it is almost needless to say that the more soap is worked and handled, and melted and remelted, the better it becomes. This soap is, in large establishments, often made of the scraps of all other kinds of soaps that accumulate from moulding and other manipulations, but of course these do not generally produce so good a soap.

Editor's note: Publication of these formulas implies no endorsement of their method or technique. SoapNuts accepts no responsibility for injuries resulting from attempt to follow these instructions. They are presented solely for the purpose of historical reference.