Substitutes for soap

Babassu oil substitutes in soap

Babassu is a lauric oil like coconut, and the other lauric oils replace it: palm kernel oil comes closest in the bar below, then cohune and coconut oil, each within two points on every quality but INS. Coconut oil takes a little more lye, so weigh the lye for babassu and use coconut, and the bar comes out at 5.7 % superfat instead of 5 %. Without a lauric oil the bar loses its cleansing and most of its lather.

The bar they are tried in

Babassu oil25 %
Olive oil50 %
Shea butter20 %
Castor oil5 %

NaOH · 1000 g · Superfat 5 % 137.6 g

The bar: 25 % babassu oil, at a 5 % superfat, for 1,000 g of oils. The rest: 50 % olive oil, 20 % shea butter, and 5 % castor oil. As it is, it needs 137.6 g of sodium hydroxide.

Open the bar in the lye calculator

The substitutes, closest first

Substitute	Sodium hydroxide, g	With the lye left as it was
1Palm kernel oil	136.7	4.4 %recalculate
2Cohune oil	138.3	5.5 %barely moves
3Coconut oil	138.6	5.7 %recalculate
4Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	127.4	−2.6 %lye-heavy: never swap without recalculating

With the lye left as it was: the superfat when the sodium hydroxide weighed for the bar as it is goes in with the substitute, planned at 5 %. Each lye figure opens that bar in the lye calculator, which works out the lye for it.

Side by side: Coconut oil vs babassu oil Babassu oil vs palm kernel oil

What each does to the bar

	Hardness	Cleansing	Conditioning	Bubbly lather	Creamy lather	Iodine value	INS	Linoleic and linolenic acid, %
As it is, with babassu oil	37	17	61	21	25	61	143	8.9
Palm kernel oil	37	17	61	21	24	61	140	8.5
Cohune oil	36	16	60	20	25	60	144	8.4
Coconut oil	37	17	59	21	25	59	146	8.4
Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	22	0	77	4	26	78	110	11.2
Usual range	29–54	12–22	44–69	14–46	16–48	41–70	136–165

Closest means the smallest total change across these figures, each counted against the width of its usual range, as the lye calculator’s swap suggestions count it. It is a convention, not a verdict on the bar: a butter that matches on paper can still melt lower, crack or smell, which the note above and the guides cover.

Guides

The soaping oils: what each one brings to a bar

Substitutes for other oils

Where these numbers come from

Every figure here is worked out from the oil records, each with its sources on its own page: