Grocers' Goods / A Family Guide to the Purchase of Flour, Sugar, Tea, Coffee, Spices, Canned Goods, Cigars, Wines, and All Other Articles Usually Found in American Grocery Stores

by Frederick B. Goddard

What Soaps Are Made Of.

Common Yellow Bar Soap contains soda with fat and rosin. White Soap consists of tallow and soda. Castile Soap is made of olive oil and soda. Common Fancy Soaps are mainly ordinary soap colored and scented. Real Brown Windsor Soap is made of goat tallow, olive oil and soda. Transparent Soaps are those which have been dissolved in alcohol. Fine Toilet Soaps are made with as little alkali as possible, of almond, palm or olive oil, suet, lard, etc., colored and perfumed.

Shaving Soaps and Creams are made either with soda or potash, of fine tallow or cocoanut oil, which has the property of making a strong lather. Mottled Soaps owe their variegations of color to the use of iron oxides. It is said that these cannot be effectively applied if the soap contains an excess of water, and that more skill is required to make good blue mottled soap than any other. The more any soap is worked over, or remelted, cooled, etc., the better it becomes.