Soapmaking 101

Lesson 3: Ingredients

Animal or Vegetable?

You may have noticed a pattern in my ingredients list... I only list vegetable oils. Nowhere do I mention tallow or lard, both made from rendering meat to obtain fat that can be used in soapmaking.

I am not against the use of animal fat to make soap per se. I have used soap made with tallow and the bars are mild and are excellent in their consitency and lathering ability. It is the rendering of the tallow that gets me. Norma Coney describes rendering tallow from beef suet in full in her book The Complete Soapmaker. Basically, beef fat is boiled in water and separated from its impurities. It not only smells awful while you are making it, but it is time intensive as well. Obviously using tallow would be the most authentic form of soap making. Out of the seven basic soap recipes listed by Norma Coney in The Complete Soapmaker , five use tallow, so if you want to make soap like the pioneers, you may want to purchase her book.

In addition to tallow, other animal products can be used in soapmaking. Goat's Milk can be subsituted for water and makes an amazingly creamy bar (see Lesson Eight: Advanced Techniques for using goat's milk in recipes). In addition, oils such as emu oil (rendered from emu meat) are now available and, I'm told, make wonderful soap.

It is up to you whether you want to use animal products in your soaps. I have tried to list some additional resources regarding tallow and other animal oils in the supplies and ingredients links sections if you want to explore your options.

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