🧼Soapmaking🧽
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THE LYE-STAND.
--Insist on all your wood-ashes being saved to make the family soap. It is a great item in the economy of housekeeping. Let your servants understand at once that you will not buy soap when there are abundant materials at home for its manufacture. Any ordinary carpenter can make you a lyestand; and if you are so situated that there is not one at hand, a common cask or barrel, placed on a form and raised about three feet from the ground, will answer very well. Let the two front legs of the stand be a little lower than the two behind, that the lye may drip the better. Have a hole bored with an auger in the bottom of the cask near the front, and fit in it a plug. When this is all ready, throw a gallon of lime on the bottom of the barrel or cask, fill it with new ashes, dampen them slightly, and suffer them so to remain for three weeks; then pour a plentiful supply of boiling water on the ashes, draw off the lye, and make your soap by the receipts in this book. |
Soap was made with lye and meat scraps. The lye was obtained by placing oak ashes in a barrel with a small hole at the bottom; water was poured slowly and after passing through the ashes, was caught at the bottom in the form of a strong lye, then boiled with the fat. Every home had a ash hopper in the backyard; a barrel set on a slanting scaffold and covered to keep out the rain. All the oak ashes were poured into the hopper until soap making time. This was usually in the spring; after all the hogs had been killed, and the soap fat saved.
Rachel McSwain Fullilove |
Soaps.
TWENTY-FIVE pounds of clean tallow or lard. If you have not these, use kitchen grease, that is, the skimmings from pots or what is left from frying, or refuse grease of any kind. Boil this in weak lye to clean it. Put your grease in a pot or kettle, let it melt, and begin to fry, then add one gallon of weak lye, gradually, stirring it all the while; after it boils awhile add another gallon of weak lye. Let it boil again, then throw in two or three gallons of strong lye that will bear up an egg. Continue to boil your soap briskly, adding strong lye till no more grease appears on the surface, and the mixture becomes transparent and thick. As soon as these conditions arise, pour in gradually a quart of fine salt. Take your pot from the fire, and let it remain till next day, when the hard soap will need cutting out, washed from the crude lye below it, and again melted, poured into a square frame or box, and suffered to remain till cold, when you may cut it into bars, and dry it for use.
If you wish soft soap, do not add any salt. If you wish pure, mild soap, melt it a third time, with rain-water, which will cause all the harsh quality to leave the soap, and sink with the water below where the soap is cold and hard.
TWENTY-FIVE pounds of clean tallow or lard. If you have not these, use kitchen grease, that is, the skimmings from pots or what is left from frying, or refuse grease of any kind. Boil this in weak lye to clean it. Put your grease in a pot or kettle, let it melt, and begin to fry, then add one gallon of weak lye, gradually, stirring it all the while; after it boils awhile add another gallon of weak lye. Let it boil again, then throw in two or three gallons of strong lye that will bear up an egg. Continue to boil your soap briskly, adding strong lye till no more grease appears on the surface, and the mixture becomes transparent and thick. As soon as these conditions arise, pour in gradually a quart of fine salt. Take your pot from the fire, and let it remain till next day, when the hard soap will need cutting out, washed from the crude lye below it, and again melted, poured into a square frame or box, and suffered to remain till cold, when you may cut it into bars, and dry it for use.
If you wish soft soap, do not add any salt. If you wish pure, mild soap, melt it a third time, with rain-water, which will cause all the harsh quality to leave the soap, and sink with the water below where the soap is cold and hard.
THE
YOUNG HOUSEWIFE'S
COUNSELLOR AND FRIEND:
BY, MRS. MARY MASON
YOUNG HOUSEWIFE'S
COUNSELLOR AND FRIEND:
BY, MRS. MARY MASON