Recipe - Cooked Homemade Lye Soap

10 One half pound Rendered fat
Crackerns; rancid lard or
Mutton tallow
3 Buckets of soft; (14 qt.)
Water; cold
3 cn Lye

To make the soap, take the crackerns or grease make sure it is salt free.
Add 1 bucket of water. Mix up together in a large wash tub or kettle, about
a 25 gallon size. Place over a hot fire, be sure and add the 3 cans of lye
before the mixture gets too warm. As when the lye is added, it will bubble
up. Have a stick, 3 feet long to stir with. Keep stirring until all
crackerns are cooked up. Then slowly add the remaining buckets of water.
The cooking should be done outside, and watched very closely as if the fire
gets too hot, it will boil over. If that should happen have about 1 quart
of cold water handy. Use about a cup of it, pour into the cooking soap and
stir. That will take the boiling down. Remove some of wood under the kettle
so it won't be so hot. The mixture should string from the stick when you
hold it up or place a few drops on a dish and if it sets up, your soap is
done. Let it cool a little, then dip it out of the tub and put in either
earthen, glass or enamel containers as the lye with harm anything that is
metal or tin. Let set overnight, then cut into bars. Be sure and weigh your
empty bucket first, as most buckets, that hold 10 One half pounds of crackerns
will weigh about 2 pounds. So with the weight of the bucket and crackerns,
should be 12 One half pounds. Always make soap in the New Moon and in warm
weather as it takes the soap bars about 3 weeks to dry and they shouldn't
freeze.

NOTES : Notes

Posted to recipeludigest Volume 01 Number 241 by "Diane Geary"
diane@keyway.net on Nov 10, 1997