Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1869 — Soap Making. [ARTICLE]

Soap Making.

Soap making is an important household operation. We have already published some communication# upon the subject, and now give place to one from Mrs. M. C. Hoss, Warsaw, 111., which has the merit of beiug direct and practical. She writes: In the first place, if your wood is poor, your ashes will bp poor and you will not have good soap. Take g<x>d care of your ashes, and one week before the lye is required, put them in the leach, pounding them down solid. It is easier done if they arc dampened. Then pour on water until they begin to drip, after which let them stand one week to “rot,” then hang on your kettles, and commence running oft' lye for operations. By letting the ashes stand to “rot,” as it is called, the lye is stronger,and the soap of a better quality, and not so apt to be “livery.” If the lye is t<x> strong, I weaken; if-too weak I boil it. The proper strength can be told by putting a fresh egg into it. It should throw the big end of the egg up above the surtaco to show about the size of a silver dime (if any one now-a-days can find one to make the comparison). If tiie lye is a trifle weaker, the egg sinks. With lye of this strength, take a pound of clear grease, or its equivalent in common “ soap • grease,” to each gallon of lyo used, uud set to boiling. After the grease is eaten up, if the mixture will “vat” or take the -plume off a feather, put in more ggeas’e. If a white scum rises on top, skim it off, or put in more lye. This scum is grease, and should never be left until it is cold. Boil until it looks ropy as it runs off the stirrer. If not boiled too thick, all samment will settle while it is cooling, and I prefer not to have the lye poured in as Mr. Gage directs in an article in the May number. A former writer gives her trouble with grease that was too salt. I think if she had rightly known, her lye was too strong. I never had trouble with salty grease except that it makes the soap hard. A. lady once put up her ashes with mine for making soap. It was so strong as to bear an egg entirely above the lye. I weakened mine and had no difficulty. She tried an experiment, and boiled all day ; still, as she expressed it, “it wouldn’t come worth a cent.” An old lady seeing it, told her to pour water into it. She added nearly as much water as there was compound in the kettle. Instantly the soap come. — American Agricvlturint.