Old-Style Family Soft Soap

Ingredients

• two pails of boiling hot water
• half of a bushel of ashes
• two pounds of slacked lime
• a gallon of the lye
• the grease consisting of all kinds of fat

Method

1. 1

   To set the leach, bore holes in a barrel or use one without a bottom.

2. 2

   Prepare a board larger than the barrel, set the barrel on it, and cut a groove to carry off the lye.

3. 3

   Place the barrel two feet from the ground.

4. 4

   Pack ashes tightly, leaving a funnel-shaped hollow for water.

5. 5

   Use rain-water boiling hot.

6. 6

   Let it disappear before adding more.

7. 7

   For boiled soft soap, fill a kettle half full with grease, heat it, and add lye gradually until it boils.

8. 8

   Test the soap by mixing with rain-water.

9. 9

   Continue boiling until thick like molasses.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Original White House Cookbook (1887) by Hugo Ziemann, F. L. Gillette, Hugo Zimmerman, mrs gillette, page 359. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

r gallon of the lye, stir it thoroughly ; in half an hour repeat the process, and thus proceed until you have poured off all the lye ; then add two pails of boiling hot water to the remainder of the potash, and let it stand ten hours ; then stir the mixture, and^ if it has become stiff and the grease has disappeared from the surface, take out a little and see whether the weak lye will thicken it ; if it does, add the lye ; if it does not, try water, and if that thickens it, let it stand another day, stirring it well five or six times during the day; if the lye does not separate from the grease you may fill up with water. OLD-STYLE FAMILY SOFT SOAP. Tlo set the leach, bore several holes in the bottom of a barrel, or use one without a bottom; prepare a board larger than the barrel, then set the barrel on it, and cut a grove around just outside the barrel, making one grove from this to the edge of the board, to carry off the lye as it runs off, with a groove around it, running into one in the centre of the board. Place all two feet from the ground and tip it so that the lye may run 538 MISCELLANEOUS RECIPES. easily from the board into the vessel below prepared to receive it. Put half bricks or stones around the edge of the inside of the barrel ; place on them one end of some sticks about two inches wide, inclining to the centre ; on those place some straw to the depth of two inches, over it scat- ter two pounds of slacked lime. Put in ashes, about half of a bushel at a time, pack it well, by pounding it down, and continue doing so until the barrel is full, leaving a funnel-shaped hollow in the centre large enough to hold several quarts of water. Use rain-water boiling hot. Let the water disappear before adding more. If the ashes are packed very tightly it may require two or three days before the lye will begin to run, but it will be the stronger for it, and much better. To Make Boiled Soft Soap. — Put in a kettle the grease consisting of all kinds of fat

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.