Of Soap
Agnes deLanvalleiI was territorial baroness and thought I should stay around the baronial encampment at the War of the Lilies, so I generated projects to do in camp. These featured cooking over the camp fire. I tried not to use a cooler and to arrive with all the food I needed for the whole week. so the menu I planned was a downward spiral from fresh meat through eggs and summer sausage to cheese and nuts. At that time Lilies didn’t have food vendors, so my backups were canned sardines and tuna.
I planned to make soap at the end of the week. Soap is formed in the reaction of fats with a base (alkalai). Traditionally the fats were from slaughtered animals and the base was lye created by running water through wood ash.
My breakfasts were bacon and eggs and I saved the bacon fat for the soap. At air temperature in June in Missouri, my bacon fat was a liquid. I hadn’t thought of that. I also did not have a proper container, for example, one with a lid, for the bacon fat. So I kept it in a bowl and put something--usually a small dish--over it and tried not to spill it.
All week I washed my dishes with running water and the clean sand I had brought for that purpose. I found that if you don’t know about germs, water and sand work just fine. The grease came off and the pots seemed clean. Thinking in a modern sense about cleanliness, getting the pans good and hot before adding food the next time probably killed many surviving germs.
When Friday came, I gathered all the ashes from 6 days of fires. They didn’t seem very much. My neighbors were happy to contribute. I probably collected as much as 2 bushels of ashes. I hauled water and poured it through the ashes. Actually, I poured hot water through the ashes because I didn’t know cold water works fine. I put the ashes in a big woven fruit basket and broke a hole in one corner to direct the water. I kept the volume of water small because the pot I had for making soap was small, maybe a gallon. I ran some of the lye water back through the ashes to use all the ashes and not get too much water.
When I had all the lye the pot would hold, I put it on the fire. The ratio my advisor, Her Ladyship Annalies Grossmund, recommended was 1 fat: 8 water. So only a little of my saved bacon fat was added to the lye. If the lye was somewhat over a gallon, that’s a little more than a cup of fat. I estimated, considering that a more likely medieval method than pouring things into measuring cups. There should have been a pinch of salt, but I forgot it.
I stirred and waited and stirred.
All day.
The water slowly cooked away.
Late in the afternoon, as the water was nearly gone, the little bit of goo in the bottom of the pan saponified. Fat and lye reacted to make soap molecules. My yield was about four small tablespoons, and it was a liquid. I am told that these conditions normally produce soft soap, but I was surprised.
My soft soap smelled distinctly like bacon!I learned that it is easy but tedious to make soap.
I learned you can clean dishes just fine with water and sand.
I wonder what they used soap for in the middle ages, to go to the work of making it. I wouldn’t use my bacon soap to clean woolens, but that would be one sensible application for soap.