the.com/soapmaking
the ancient art of turning fat and ashes into the reason you smell good
means The craft of making soap by combining fats or oils with an alkali (lye), through a chemical reaction called saponification, often scented and shaped into bars.
from A plain English compound of "soap" + "making." "Soap" descends from Old English "sape," with cousins across the Germanic languages (German "Seife," Dutch "zeep"). The Romans borrowed a related word, Latin "sapo," reportedly from a Germanic source. There's a charming folk tale that soap was discovered at "Mount Sapo," where rain washed animal fat and wood ash down into a river to make a cleansing froth — but there's no real evidence such a mountain existed, and the name itself is the older root. What's true is the chemistry: fat plus alkali (originally leached from wood ashes) really does make soap, an art practiced for thousands of years.
- core reaction
- Lye plus oil equals soap, called saponification
- roman origin
- Named for Mount Sapo, where fat ran downhill
- no lye, no soap
- Every real bar once met sodium hydroxide
- cure time
- Cold-process bars rest four to six weeks
- glycerin bonus
- Handmade soap keeps moisturizing glycerin factories strip out
marseille soap — french soap made with olive oil, produced in marseille since the 17th century
castile soap — spanish soap made from olive oil, originated in the castile region
aleppo soap — syrian soap made with olive oil and laurel oil, produced in aleppo for over 3,500 years