SOFT SOAP Soft Soap—Cold Process.—A pow erful detergent for scrubbing floors, walls, and sinks, and all other pur poses of the household can be made from ordinary kitchen drippings by the use of crude potash. This is very common in the older portions of the United States, especially New York and New England. One of the best traditional receipts for homemade soft soap is: fat, 12 pounds; potash, 9 pounds; water, 12 gallons.
Put the fat in a tight cask or bar rel and add the potash dissolved in 3 gallons of boiling water. Mix by stir ring. Add the remaining 9 gallons of water, 3 gallons at a time, boiling hot, once in 24 hours, and each time stir vigorously. A long stick or pad dle should be kept in the mixture, and it should be stirred frequently. The alkali at once attacks the fat, but it will require a month or more, depend ing upon the purity of the ingredients, to complete the process of saponifica tion. When the soap is done it will be free from lumps and will have a uniform jellylike consistency. When stirred it will have a silky luster and will trail off in slender threads from the paddle.
Soft soap contains, in addition to the actual alkali salts of the fatty acids — i. e., real soap — a certain amount of free alkali, all of the glyc erin contained in the fat, which is released in the process of saponifica tion, and other impurities. If these are removed by boiling, the result is the formation of hard soap as here inafter described.
Soft Soap—Boiling Process.—Soft soap may also be made by boiling di lute caustic potash lye or lye from leached ashes with grease until sapon ification takes place. To effect this, prepare a sufficient quantity of lye in a separate receptacle, put the grease in the soap kettle, add sufficient lye in which to melt the grease without burning, and continue to ladle in ad ditional lye until all the grease is saponified. This will be done more quickly if the lye is added boiling hot. In making soft soap it must be borne in mind that all impurities con tained in the ingredients will be found in the completed product. Hence the
importance of purifying the grease and using a good white lye. Also, if too much lye is added, a soft soap will be produced that will have strong caustic properties. Hence more grease must be put in to take up the excess of lye.
As the lye is gradually added and combined with the grease, the thick liquid will become stringy and some what turbid. It will fall from the paddle with a shining luster. A ladle ful of a stronger lye should be added at regular intervals until the liquid becomes clarified in a uniformly clear slime.
To test if the soap is done, put a few drops from the middle of the kettle on a plate of glass to cool. If the soap remains clear when cool it is complete. If there is a great de ficiency of lye the drop of soap will be weak and gray; if the deficiency is not quite so great there may be merely a gray margin around the out side of the drop; if too much lye has been added a gray skin will spread over the whole drop. It will cease to be sticky, but while wet can be easily slid along the glass. In this case the soap is said to be overdone and more grease must be added. The froth which rises is caused by an ex cess, of water, and the soap must be kept on the fire until this is evaporat ed, the froth being beaten with pad dles to admit the air. When the froth ceases to rise the soap falls lower in the kettle and takes on a darker col or. White bubbles appear on its sur face one over another, with a peculiar sound, causing soap boilers to say that " the soap talks." It is now com plete and is ready for use as soon as cold.
Recipes for Soft Soap—Cold Proc ess.—Mix In a kettle or wash boiler 8 pounds of melted grease with 11 pailfuls of strong lye that will float a fresh egg. Bring to a boil, pour into the soap barrel, and thin with weak lye obtained by leaching wood ashes. Place the barrel out of doors in warm water or in a warm place. The soap should be ready for use in a few days.