Substitutes for soap

Mango butter substitutes in soap

Mango butter is a soft butter, and the ones that replace it best on the numbers are sal, shea and kokum, each keeping hardness, conditioning and lather in the bar below within two points of where mango had them. Sal and kokum barely move the lye; shea takes a little less. Mango butter’s own melting point runs from 17.6 to 34.3 °C with the variety, so one lot can be much softer than the next.

The bar they are tried in

Mango butter15 %
Olive oil55 %
Coconut oil25 %
Castor oil5 %

NaOH · 1000 g · Superfat 5 % 139.7 g

The bar: 15 % mango butter, at a 5 % superfat, for 1,000 g of oils. The rest: 55 % olive oil, 25 % coconut oil, and 5 % castor oil. As it is, it needs 139.7 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
1Sal butter	139.3	4.7 %barely moves
2Shea butter	138.9	4.4 %recalculate
3Kokum butter	139.5	4.9 %barely moves
4Cocoa butter	139.9	5.1 %barely moves
5Illipe butter	139.6	4.9 %barely moves
6Cupuaçu butter	139.7	5.0 %barely moves
7Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	139.6	4.9 %barely moves

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: Shea butter vs mango butter Cocoa butter vs mango butter

What each does to the bar

	Hardness	Cleansing	Conditioning	Bubbly lather	Creamy lather	Iodine value	INS	Linoleic and linolenic acid, %
As it is, with mango butter	37	17	59	21	24	60	147	8.3
Sal butter	37	17	58	21	25	59	147	8.1
Shea butter	36	17	60	21	23	61	144	8.7
Kokum butter	38	17	59	22	25	58	148	7.8
Cocoa butter	38	17	58	21	26	58	148	8.4
Illipe butter	39	17	57	21	26	58	148	7.9
Cupuaçu butter	35	17	61	22	23	64	142	10.3
Nothing in its place: olive oil takes its share	32	17	65	21	19	66	141	9.7
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

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: