There are many oils and fats available today for use in soap-making. Only by understanding their benefits, limitations, and availability can you determine which combinations of these are best suited to your particular needs. The essential nature of any soap is directly related to the oils and fats in it.
AVOCADO OIL
Nature: Avocado oil is obtained from the pulp of the avocado pear and is one of the most active and effective ingredients used by the cosmetic industry. Because it has an extraordinarily high percentage of unsaponifiables (the portion of the oil which does not react to form soap, but rather retains its original makeup), avocado oil is highly therapeutic. It contains protein, amino acids, and relatively large amounts of vitamins A, D, and E, making this oil very much alive. These components are not only moisturizing, but also healing. They enable avocado oil to regenerate cells, soften body tissue, and heal scaly skin and scalp.
Types/Availability: Avocado oil can be purchased in larger quantities from vegetable oil distributors, or in small bottles at the supermarket or a gourmet food shop. Of course, the smaller quantity is more costly.
Use/Benefits: As with almond oil, avocado oil need not be the predominant oil in a soap formula for the benefits of its qualities to be enjoyed. Don’t rely upon this oil for lather or hardness, but instead for its effective unsaponifiables. Splurge and use higher proportions of avocado oil in the base formula in soap for people with extremely sensitive skin.
CASTOR OIL
Nature: The castor oil (sometimes referred to as Palm Christi oil) rendered from the first cold-pressing of the beans is used medicinally. Further pressing yields the grade best suited for soapmaking.
Castor oil’s high percentage of ricinoleic acid, which gives the oil its high viscosity, sets it apart from all of the other vegetable oils. When calculating the amount of sodium hydroxide required to saponify castor oil, consider the oil’s unique makeup. Though it would appear to require less sodium hydroxide, it actually requires more, due to its high ricinoleic acid content. (See page 50 in chapter 13, The Chemistry of Soapmaking.)
Types/Availability: It is difficult to find local suppliers for soapmaking quantities of castor oil, but many fat/oil manufacturers and distributors carry it in large supply.
Use/Benefits: Like olive oil and jojoba oil, castor oil acts as a humectant by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin. This moisturizing quality makes castor oil well suited for shampoo bars and skin-care products. Castor oil alone is rarely used to make soap because, without other oils, it produces a transparent, soft soap. In combination with other vegetable oils, however, it makes a wonderfully emollient, hard bar of soap.
CAUTION
Though I like the smell of refined castor oil, it has a stronger odor than other vegetable oils. When it comes time to scent a batch of soap containing a high percentage of castor oil, know that the castor oil will overpower your essential oils. The final bars will not necessarily smell of castor oil, but they will carry a diluted, altered form of your chosen scent. You can protect against this problem by simply keeping the amount of castor oil in your formula in balance. Also, raw castor oil has a protein which is a poison. Be sure to buy detoxified castor oil.
COCONUT OIL
Nature: Coconut oil is a gift. It has changed soapmaking more dramatically than any other vegetable oil, and its discovery has led to higher grade soaps. Even companies manufacturing tallow soaps use about 20 percent coconut oil for its lathering and moisturizing properties. Natural soap manufacturers usually combine it with olive, palm, soy, or castor oils for an all-vegetable soap. I cannot say enough about this oil. It offers all soapmaking blends the missing link. Without its wonderful lathering quality, any formula is lacking.
Types/Availability: Today’s soapmaker can purchase coconut oil in a few different phases, each phase with a slightly different melting point: 76°F (24°C), 92°F (33°C), 101°F (38°C), and 110°F (43°C), all available in pails, cubes, or drums. The 76°F (24°C) oil begins to solidify somewhere between 72°F (22°C) and 78°F (26°C); the others solidify around their respective temperatures. The coconut oil found at supermarkets is normally the 76°F (24°C) coconut oil. Soapmakers usually have a preference for a particular phase oil based on their particular methods and formulas.
Use/Benefits: Coconut oil is obtained from copra, which is dried coconut meat. More than any other fat or oil, it is an anomaly. A percentage of coconut oil in cosmetics is moisturizing. Too much of it can be drying. Its saturated nature resists rancidity and makes a very hard soap, yet its low molecular weight allows for high solubility and a quick, fluffy lather, even in cold seawater.
COTTONSEED OIL
Nature: Cottonseed oil is a by-product of the cotton industry, obtained by steaming the hulled cottonseeds. Though not as costly as some of the more obscure oils, cottonseed oil normally is too expensive for soapmakers to use in quantity.
Types/Availability: Since I know of no manufacturer or distributor that limits pesticide use on cotton grown for oil production, I cannot suggest suppliers. With the many oils available to soap-makers, I urge you to choose one of the others.
CAUTION
One of my personal concerns with respect to cottonseed oil is today’s free use of pesticides by the farming industry. Organic farmers are out there, but very few are growing organic cotton. Most of the cotton grown is sprayed with highly toxic synthetic chemicals, and I have concerns about using its by-products in food and cosmetics.
Use/Benefits: Cottonseed oil can be compared to peanut oil with respect to the soap it produces. It is unsaturated, and, though a little slow to saponify with the cold-process, it does offer a quick, abundant, and lasting lather. Cottonseed oil also has emollient qualities, but it is more vulnerable to rancidity than some of the other fats and oils. This is due to a fairly high free fatty acid content, a factor that varies according to the weather endured by the cotton plant after ripening to maturity. Plants exposed to excess rain and humidity render an oil high in free fatty acids and therefore more vulnerable to spoilage. Watch for this potential problem, which can be corrected by reducing the amount of cottonseed oil in your formula.
LARD
Nature: Lard is obtained by rendering and refining the fat of hogs. Most of us don’t understand clearly the distinction between the grades of lard, though the characteristics of the soaps each produces differ enough to make it worth our attention. It’s more difficult to place orders for fats and oils if we don’t really understand how each one works in our soap formulas.
Types/Availability: Higher grades of lard are edible; lesser grades are inedible. Both are used in soapmaking, though the inedible lard is used more often. The finest lard comes from the fat around the kidneys and has a mild odor. The grades of both edible and inedible lards are no longer clearly defined, and classifications vary from company to company. What once were referred to as choice lard, prime steam lard, and leaf lard, are now known by a variety of names.
Inedible lard is often termed Choice White Grease, and, though many soapmakers use it, this grease is associated more with lower grades of soap than the higher grade skin-care soaps. They are made from the less desirable packing house products, and may contain either inedible lard or inedible tallow. They are much higher in free fatty acids than edible lard, so chemical preservatives are often added to delay rancidity.
Most of the fat and oil distributors that carry tallow also carry lard. Some meat processing companies sell lard as a byproduct of the manufacturing process.
Use/Benefits: Whichever lard you choose to use, be sure to use it only in combination with some beneficial vegetable oils. Lard will produce a lasting lather, and it does add conditioning and good cleansing qualities, but lard soaps are soft and not easily soluble in cold water. Its skin-care benefits are negligible, and the lower grades produce soaps which, over time, develop a lard odor. So add coconut oil, palm oil, and olive oil to the formula. Better yet, consider the animal rights concern, and stick with the multitude of vegetable oils available.
Nature: The first cold pressing of the olive yields the highest grade extra virgin and virgin olive oils. These oils are released from the first gentle pressing of the olive fruit, without heat or refinement (see refinement in glossary on page 169). Refined grade A olive oil is obtained by exerting more pressure on the fruit that has already been squeezed lightly to produce the virgin oils. This subsequent pressing, though also cold pressed, contains a higher percentage of free fatty acids and requires some refining. The final pressings of the olives yield what are called grade B refined olive oil and refined pomace olive oil. Grade B refined olive oil is obtained by solvent (usually hexane) extraction using the fruit residue from earlier pressings. Pomace oil is made using the same olive fruit residue used for grade B oil, but it also makes use of the pits (or pomace) of the olives. Each successive pressing is an inferior food grade to the preceding one, but the final pressings are actually best suited for soapmaking.
CAUTION
Watch for adulterated olive oils, where the manufacturer or a distributor has incorporated some cheaper oils to increase profits. An adulterated, name brand olive oil caused me a year of processing problems.
In soapmaking, olive oil often has the reputation of being one of the more difficult oils to saponify, but, with some basic understanding of the different grades of olive oil (see Types/Availability), it is as workable as the other fats and oils. It is one of the vegetable oils I consider indispensable and worth the research.
Types/Availability: For years I’ve been told that, with respect to soapmaking, one variety of olive oil is no different from another: their fatty acid structures, their SAP values, their free fatty acid contents, and their iodine values are basically the same, (see Glossary pages 168–170 for an explanation of these scientific terms). I was told to expect a grade A olive oil, a pomace olive oil, and an extra virgin olive oil to experience the same sort of reaction in the soap pan.
This is just not the case. Within each oil is an unsaponifiable portion. These are the components that don’t react with the alkali to form soap. They are thought of as impurities, many of which are removed during the refining process. These unsaponifiables are often overlooked because they’re a relatively small percentage of the whole, yet I regard them as a rich source of information about a particular oil, especially each grade of olive oil, because the percentages of unsaponifiables vary greatly from one grade to the next. These unsaponifiables can make one grade of olive oil react very differently from another in the soap pan.
The percentage of unsaponifiables is very high in pomace olive oil, and dramatically lower in a grade A olive oil or an extra virgin olive oil. The unsaponifiables in a pomace olive oil create a thick, waxy, synergistic soup, making the oil more viscous, quick to react, and fast to pull the neutral fats into the soap-making reaction. They act as a catalyst, getting the reaction going and building up some momentum.
Extra-virgin olive oil is the most desirable grade for the gourmet chef, but grades A and B are best suited to the soap-maker who uses a high proportion of olive oil (nearly half of the total oils) in a vegetable-based soap. Pomace oil, with the highest percentage of unsaponifiables, pulls the other vegetable oils into the quickest saponification, but often the pomace oil produces a darker soap, and sometimes overreacts to other soap-making ingredients, particularly fragrance oils, and even some pure essential oils. Fragrance oils, which often contain dipropylene glycol, or even certain pure essential oils like cassia and clove, can cause any soap formula to begin setting up too quickly in the pan, but the reaction seems exaggerated in formulas using a pomace olive oil.
For a vegetable soap formula incorporating a high percentage of olive oil, my preference is a grade A or a grade B refined olive oil. If you only have easy access to the higher grades, expect a longer saponification time, or, with a pomace olive oil, be prepared to act quickly once the fragrance is added.
Use/Benefits: Olive oil is a very good moisturizer, not because it has its own healing properties, but because it attracts external moisture, holds the moisture close to the skin, and forms a breathable film to prevent loss of internal moisture. Unlike so many other substances used for this purpose, olive oil does not block the natural functions of the skin while performing its own. The skin is able to continue sweating, releasing sebum, and shedding dead skin. Olive oil, jojoba oil, shea butter, kukui nut oil, and some other natural materials do not inhibit these necessary functions.
I don’t choose my soap’s ingredients only for the physical properties they lend to the soap. I want each oil to also function as a skin-care product. For this reason, I use a higher proportion of olive oil and accept its more temperamental nature.
Within the industrial setting, where soaps are often milled, olive oil soaps tend to be very hard. Synthetic additives often contribute to this consistency. For the cold-process soapmaker, olive oil (without synthetic additives) does not make a rock hard soap. You must add coconut and palm oils to ensure a hard bar. The color of the final soap varies with the grade and color of the olive oil used, from white to yellow, from light green to dark green. To make a pure white soap, use a grade A or B refined olive oil that looks bright yellow or gold in the bottle.
Though olive oil soaps produce a slow and stingy lather, they are mild and clean well. Pure olive oil soaps, and those made with a high percentage of olive oil and no harsh additives, are generally safe enough for sensitive skin and babies. Castile soap was produced for centuries as 100 percent olive oil soap, though now many companies produce castile bars with part olive oil, part tallow. The boundaries are blurred, and, without ingredient disclosure laws, anything goes, so ask for details on the content of any soap.
PALM OIL
Nature: Palm oil and palm kernel oil come from one variety of palm tree (the oil palm), while coconut oil comes from another variety (the coconut palm). Palm oil is made from the pulp of the fruit.
Types/Availability: Palm oil is harder to buy in small quantity, though suppliers are out there. Not long ago, before high cholesterol was linked directly to saturated fats, palm oil was used by nearly all bakeries. Since we’ve learned to substitute the healthier unsaturated oils, demand for palm oil is but a fraction of what it once was. Industries other than the food industry use palm oil, but oil and fat distributors do not have the demand to break down tank truck loads (50,000 pounds) into anything smaller than 400-pound drums. However, these companies occasionally are willing to pour a few 35-pound pails while they’re pouring a larger order. You must call around and ask. With many calls, you are bound to find someone who is willing to help.
Use/Benefits: A soap made exclusively with palm oil will be brittle and, because of its high percentage of free fatty acids, the glycerin yield is low. In many respects, palm oil contributes many of the same qualities as tallow. They both produce a small and slow lather, and their skin-care contribution is negligible.
Palm oil is wonderful, however, within a mixture of other oils. When it is used in combination with olive and coconut oils, it produces a very nice soap. Though coconut oil produces a fluffy, quick lather and makes a hard bar of soap, we must limit its percentage within a formula to avoid a drying effect on skin. This is where palm oil is useful. It, too, makes a hard bar of soap, and, since it is less soluble in water, its firmness holds up throughout use. It also cleans well, saponifies easily, and is mild. Palm oil is the animal rights advocates’ substitute for tallow.
My favorite soaps all include some significant portion of palm oil, because it produces hard bars and speeds up the soap-making process. Palm oil pulls the other soapmaking oils into a quicker saponification. Because the palm oil mixture is more reactive, you must add the essential oils and the nutrients swiftly or the soap will begin to set prematurely.
PALM KERNEL OIL AND AMERICAN PALM KERNEL OILS
Nature: There are many palm kernel oils. The oil obtained from the kernels of the African or oil palm tree is the most familiar; this tree bears the fruit used to make palm oil. The oils obtained from the kernels of Central and South American palm trees yield the American palm kernel oils, including babassu oil.
Palm kernel oil and American palm kernel oils contain large proportions of lauric acid. This fatty acid is unusual because it combines two mismatched characteristics: saturation and low molecular weight. These traits enable palm kernel oil, babassu oil, and coconut oil to produce hard soaps which also lather well in all kinds of water. Normally, a saturated fat produces a hard soap with weak lathering ability, but these oils also have low molecular weights which produce soluble soaps with easy, quick lather. Thus, oils with a high percentage of lauric acid link together the very best of soapmaking characteristics.
A SOAPMAKER’S STORY
Patricia Arvidson/Island Soap
Pat Arvidson’s interest in soapmaking was first stirred in 1977 while she was living in Australia. She saw Ann Bramson’s Soap: Making It, Enjoying It in a bookstore and thought that making soap sounded like fun. She bought the book, but didn’t actually make soap until a couple of years later while living in New Hampshire, and then it was only for her own use.
When her daughter, Jasmine, was born, Pat was living in Deer Isle, Maine. Rather than go back to her nursing job full-time, she decided to try making soap to sell. “I really taught myself how to make soap using a couple of books as a guide,” recounts Pat. “I had decided that an all-vegetable soap was the way to go, since I didn’t want to contribute to the use of animal products. Through trial and error, and many bad batches, I finally had soap I felt I could sell. I was so excited about my soap in those days, and so believed in what I was doing, that I almost went door to door with my excitement.”
Pat’s company, Island Soap, offers some wonderful varieties: “Island Seaweed” for a fresh delightful scrub, made with kelp powder, and oils of cedar-wood, eucalyptus, lavender, and thyme; “Island Herbal,” made with comfrey root powder and a lovely blend of herbal essential oils; “Island Red Rose,” made with red clay, patchouli oil, and rose fragrance oil; “Island Bayberry,” which is “spicy like the bayberries found here on the island”; “Island Lilac,” a pure white bar with the scent of spring lilacs; and bars like Citrus Cornmeal, Spicy Oatmeal, and Coconut Cocoa Butter.
Pat offers a few words of safety advice to all soapmakers. “When Jasmine was just a toddler, she tottled into the soap room (the dining room at that time), saw a wooden spoon with what she probably thought was pudding, and put it into her mouth,” recounts Pat. “We rinsed her mouth many times, and she was left only with red spots which healed quickly, but it was pretty scary. Believe me, that was the last time I ever left wooden spoons with raw soap on them lying around.”
Reflecting on her soapmaking experience, Pat says, “Through the years, I have really loved making soap — even with all of the bad batches, the late nights, and the challenges of running a business and a family under the same roof. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I’ve really loved it.”
Types/Availability: Palm kernel oils are not as common as olive or peanut oil, and you will probably not find them at supermarkets and food clubs. The most familiar palm kernel oil is carried by most fat and oil distributors, and though babassu oil is less common, there are plenty of distributors that sell it.
Use/Benefits: Soaps made from either group of palm kernel oils are white, very hard, and lather beautifully. Though some varieties differ with respect to their melting points, this factor is not important to the soapmaker, who only uses a minority percentage of the oil: 10 to 15 percent is plenty when combined with other vegetable oils. This small percentage also keeps the final bars from developing an odor characteristic of the palm kernel oil. Palm kernel oil, like coconut oil, can have a drying effect when used in excess, yet is moisturizing when used in moderation.
PEANUT OIL
Nature: Peanut oil is made by pressing shelled peanut kernels. Though considered one of the most important oils in the world, its use within soapmaking should be limited to only a minority percentage of the total oils.
Peanut oil is regarded as a non-drying, conditioning oil, offering the softening qualities of olive and castor oils. It is rich in vitamin E and is absorbed well by the skin. Some soapmakers are experimenting with using it in larger quantities, because it is less expensive in bulk than olive oil, but, for all of its benefits as a straight oil, peanut oil soaps are less than remarkable.
Types/Availability: Peanut oil is easy to find: call Oriental restaurants for their suppliers — many are happy to help out; local food clubs carry peanut oil; for very large quantities, contact oil and fat manufacturers and distributors.
Use/Benefits: Cold-process soaps made from peanut oil are too soft and produce a stable, but weak and slimy lather. However, the addition of palm and coconut oils compensates for its shortcomings. Coconut oil’s fluffy, shorter-lived lather, in combination with peanut oil’s longer-lasting, fluffless lather, creates a balance. Both coconut and palm oils ensure harder soaps. Also, like olive oil, peanut oil is highly unsaturated. Soaps containing large proportions of unsaturated oils are more vulnerable to rancidity. Limit the amount of peanut oil to 10 to 20 percent of your total fats and oils.
Once again, maintaining a balance can correct the potential pitfalls of this oil. By all means, experiment with it.
SOYBEAN OIL (VEGETABLE SHORTENING)
Nature: Soybean oil is the primary ingredient in vegetable shortening. Soybean oil is extracted from the seeds both by pressing and solvent extraction. It contains high percentages of linoleic and oleic acids, yielding a fairly soft soap, even in the hydrogenated state.
Types/Availability: Locate a fat and oil distributor or manufacturer to purchase vegetable shortening in large quantity. Discuss your soapmaking needs to determine which shortening will work best. Vegetable shortenings vary from company to company, with some better for cakes and icings, and others for soapmaking. Stress your need for hard bars of soap and for a superior grade of shortening. Local food clubs may offer vegetable shortening in fairly large quantities at a reasonable, though not wholesale, cost.
Use/Benefits: Though vegetable shortening is often chosen as a non-animal alternative to tallow or lard, it should be used as a minority oil in combination with oils which offer better skin-care properties. Since it is easy to find and relatively inexpensive, vegetable shortening can be used to contribute bulk, mildness, and a stable lather. Use it in combination with coconut oil for a fluffy lather, and with olive oil for skin conditioning.
TALLOW
Nature: Tallow has been used in soapmaking more than any other fat or oil. It is extracted by melting the solid, white, flaky fat, or suet, surrounding the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and horses. Though soaps have been made for thousands of years from scraps of fat and reused drippings, most of the tallow that is used in soapmaking today is of a higher grade and lighter color.
Types/Availability: Only the lighter color grades — which come either from edible tallows or from the higher grades of inedible tallow — are recommended for producing a high-grade soap. These contain fewer free-fatty acids.
Most of the fatty acids found in a fat or an oil are attached to a glycerol molecule, forming a triglyceride. Those fatty acids not bonded to glycerol, but instead existing independently, are known as free-fatty acids. They are less stable than the complete triglyceride, and they contribute to rancidity. The higher grades of fats and oils have a smaller percentage of free fatty acids than the lower grades, offering the soapmaker a more reliable material.
The higher grades also have a cleaner odor, though I detect a “meaty” odor while rendering even the finest grades of tallow. I find that even the final soaps made from home-rendered tallow have a meaty odor, which makes them somewhat difficult to perfume.
To render your own tallow, you’ll need to find a meat-packing plant or a good butcher to package the suet for you. For large quantity soapmaking, rendering your own tallow is impractical. It requires heating the solid suet with some water and a little salt, eventually yielding cleaner, purer tallow. The process is time-consuming and messy, leaving you with greasy pans and surfaces, even after washing and scouring. It’s a bit like plaster dust — it winds up in spots you could swear you were nowhere near. Ann Bramson’s book, Soap: Making It, Enjoying It, in which she details the rendering process, is a good resource. Try rendering once, but, for long-term soapmaking with tallow, locate a fat manufacturer or distributor that sells pre-rendered tallow in pails.
Use/Benefits: Quite a bit of controversy surrounds the use of tallow in soapmaking. It is thought to clog pores, cause black-heads, and increase the incidence of eczema for individuals with sensitive skin. Tallow’s high molecular weight and saturated structure make an insoluble bar of soap with a weak and slimy, though longer-lasting, lather. Tallow supporters point to the wonderfully hard bars it produces, and its ability to saponify (harden into soap) quickly. It is also relatively inexpensive and plentiful. Supporters cite the 5,000 years of tallow use as evidence that it’s safe.
Those who oppose the use of tallow do not deny its value to past centuries; they just question its continued use in light of today’s alternatives. Some animal rights advocates distinguish between need and convenience: pioneers would not have been able to keep disease under control without using animal by-products to make soap. Their herbal alternatives were far less effective. Today, we have a smorgasbord of vegetable oils to replace tallow in soaps. Many people consider it immoral to kill an animal for a bar of soap, when so many vegetable oils make worthy substitutes. Others argue that animals are sacrificed for their meat and not their by-products, which would only go to waste without soapmaking and other by-product industries. However, the profitability of selling by-products theoretically subsidizes the sale of meat, permitting lower meat prices and encouraging greater meat consumption.
