Noa & Una’s Marginalia 📜 Medieval Soap Making
🧼Soap has a long history, and different cultures developed their own methods of making it. However, the essential ingredients have always remained the same: fat, alkali, and water. In Europe, early soaps were commonly made from animal fats and wood ash. They were often dark gray in color, soft in texture, and could develop an unpleasant smell if the fats were not properly rendered. As soapmaking techniques improved, soaps gradually became harder and smoother, and luxury varieties were even scented with perfumes and herbs.
💭So how was soap made in medieval Europe? The process went something like this:
🏺Make the lye water by mixing wood ash with boiling water. Stir thoroughly, then leave the mixture to settle for a day.
🍲Pour the lye water into a cauldron and bring it to a boil. Add the fat and stir continuously, then mix in salt and flour to improve the texture.
🪄Keep stirring until the mixture thickens. How thick should it be? Thick enough that you can briefly see the bottom of the cauldron while stirring!
💨Once all the ingredients have fully combined, remove the cauldron from the fire.
🫗Pour the thick mixture into pre-moistened molds and place them on a level surface.
⏳Allow the soap to dry and harden naturally. After enough time has passed, a fine bar of soap is ready to be used!
Sources
Bathing and Hygiene in the Middle Ages – Medieval History
How to Make Medieval Soap: A 14-Century Recipe You Can Try – Medievalists.net
I assure you, medieval people bathed. – Going Medieval
Medieval Bath & Hygiene Display – Rosalie Medieval Women
The history of soap – Fake History Hunter
Comments (11)
Thank you, most interesting.
I would imagine that the ratio of lye to water would be critical, as too much lye would be… uncomfortable.
It's more about the ratio of lye to fat. The lye molecules react with the fat molecules to produce soap molecules, basically, so you want to have enough fat that all the lye molecules react and you have a bit of fat left over, and so that there's no actual lye in the finished product.
Thank you Sisters for sudsy bit of history!
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Been too long since I made soap! I was just talking about it with my mom and wife. We used downspout sections as molds, lol
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Great recipe, I feel like I want to try making my own soap! Unfortunately the icons on the list makes it look like a text made by AI. I'm not accusing it of being that though!
A local soap maker has a variety called "Uncle Stanley's Pipe" that is is scented with pipe tobacco. Even if you don't smoke (and smoking is Not Good anyway), it smells heavenly.
To each tehir own. I would hate to smell tobacco or pipe smoke all day. Especially if the stench was coming from me. EVent oday, I avoid people with any sort of tobacco or pipe smoke odors. (I don;t think people who smoke realize how badly the stench sticks to them and can be inflicted on others nearby.)
While this is wonderfully insightful, the icons in the text kinda iff it up for me. But hey, always happy to learn more fun medi facts :)