Awhile back I mentioned that I make soap and here it is. The one on the left is a solid shampoo ‘cookie’, the other a bar of soap. They have three ingredients – water, a fat (either animal or vegetable; if I remember correctly the ‘cookie’ has coconut oil and the bar has rendered tallow) and lye. Considering how well these simple soaps work, I wonder why most commercial soaps have so many extra ingredients – many which I can’t pronounce.
This is the book which got me started making soap many years ago. It isn’t hard to do and it is satisfying to make something so basic and use it knowing exactly what went into it.
I’ve experimented with adding things to scent the soap – like herbs and spices – without much success. The time I added cloves, the boys complained that the soap was "dirty". Tumeric tended to stain things washed with that soap. Caraway seeds made the ‘cookies’ look too edible. My ‘failures’ made me respect greatly the ‘success’ of those soaps with delightful fragrances, like Karma at Lush and Carnation at Roger de Gallet and Gardeners Loofah at Upper Canada Soap (my favorite!).