A History of Soap Making

The first literary reference to soap as a means of cleansing was by the Greek physician Galen in the second century A.D. By 1700, there were 63 soap companies in London, England, even though soap was still more of a curiosity than a household item. This changed with the medical discovery of bacteria and the concern that cleanliness could be a means of eliminating disease-producing germs.

Soap was hard to come by for the early settlers, so when livestock was slaughtered their fat was stripped off and rendered into tallow. This tallow was boiled with lye-water, which was leached from the wood ashes. This (often very harsh) soap was then used for washing clothes and floors and the occasional bath.

There was no printed recipe for soap making at this time and a soap maker had to judge the strength and quality of the lye and its reactions. In 1832, the French chemist Eugene-Michel Chevreul demystified soap by showing that saponification was a chemical process splitting fat and lye into soap and glycerin. Soon it was discovered that adding palm kernel oil produced a soap that lathered more easily. Soap started to be wrapped and named to give it product distinction, and aggressive marketing and advertising began.

By 1890 many variations of soap were offered, with the five major companies being, Colgate, Morse Taylor, Albert, Pears, and Bailey. A bar of Colgate's Cashmere Bouquet cost 25 cents, rather costly when a quart of milk was 5 cents. In 1933 Procter and Gamble introduced the first household synthetic detergent, and in 1947, Tide, the first non-soap heavy-duty laundry product hit the shelves.

The chemistry of soap manufacturing stayed essentially the same until 1916, when the first synthetic detergent was developed in Germany in response to a World War I-related shortage of fats for making soap. Known today simply as detergents, synthetic detergents are non-soap washing and cleaning products that are "synthesized" or put together chemically from a variety of raw materials. The discovery of detergents was also driven by the need for a cleaning agent that, unlike soap, would not combine with the mineral salts in water to form an insoluble substance known as soap curd.

Household detergent production in the United States began in the early 1930s, but did not really take off until after World War II. The war-time interruption of fat and oil supplies as well as the military's need for a cleaning agent that would work in mineral-rich sea water and in cold water had further stimulated research on detergents.

The first detergents were used chiefly for hand dishwashing and fine fabric laundering. The breakthrough in the development of detergents for all-purpose laundry uses came in 1946, when the first "built" detergent (containing a surfactant/builder combination) was introduced in the U.S. The surfactant is a detergent product's basic cleaning ingredient, while the builder helps the surfactant to work more efficiently. Phosphate compounds used as builders in these detergents vastly improved performance, making them suitable for cleaning heavily soiled laundry.

By 1953, sales of detergents in this country had surpassed those of soap. Now detergents have all but replaced soap-based products for laundering, dishwashing and household cleaning. Detergents (alone or in combination with soap) are also found in many of the bars and liquids used for personal cleansing.

Now in the 21st century, a person will find that most soap bars in the grocery store are actually synthetic detergents. Fortunately there has been a revival of soap making the old fashioned way.

We make soap the old-fashioned way at www.southernheartsoaps.com. We use all natural ingredients, no harsh synthetic chemicals and detergents, and the skin-nourishing, naturally produced glycerin is left in our soap.