Historical formulas
Formulas transcribed from two soap-trade books, Alexander Watt's The Art of Soap-Making (1884) and E. G. Thomssen's Soap-Making Manual (1922). They show how soap was made in factories, mostly boiled and salted out, sometimes with fats nobody sells now, such as house grease and cottonseed foots. We keep them as records, with each book's own figures and a citation. Where every fat is one we carry, the calculator can open the proportions as a modern cold-process soap.
Download the formulas as CSV or JSON, each line as its book printed it, with the page, free to reuse under the ODbL.
Alexander Watt · 1884
The Art of Soap-Making: A Practical Handbook of the Manufacture of Hard and Soft Soaps, Toilet Soaps, Etc.
- French formula I — white, odourless soap
- French formula II — hard palm and sesame soap
- French formula III — tallow-led soap
- French formula IV — white soap with cocoa-nut
- Lard soap, cold process
- Marseilles soap
- Oleic acid (red oil) soap
- Tallow soap by Hawes's cold process
- Toilet soap fat group I (tallow and colza)
- Toilet soap fat group II (tallow and tallow-oil)
- Toilet soap fat group III (tallow and palm)
- White cocoa-oil soap (Sturtevant's process)
- White soap, cold process, small batch
- Windsor soap
- Yellow soap with cocoa-oil
E. G. Thomssen · 1922
Soap-Making Manual: A Practical Handbook on the Raw Materials, Their Manipulation, Analysis and Control in the Modern Soap Plant
- Cold-made cocoanut oil soap
- Cold-made shaving soap
- Cold-made transparent soap I
- Cold-made transparent soap III
- Cold-made transparent soap IV
- Cold-made transparent soap V
- Curd soap, typical charge
- Glued-up soap, kettle stock
- Liquid soap I (cocoanut)
- Liquid soap II (corn oil)
- Liquid soap III (dilute cocoanut)
- Olive oil base (white), leanest of the stated range
- Olive oil base (white), richest of the stated range
- Olive-foots potash soap for silk throwing
- Olive, tallow and cocoanut base
- Palm and olive base
- Palm base (leanest of the stated range)
- Palm base (richest of the stated range)
- Palm kernel and corn oil charge
- Palm kernel and red oil charge
- Palm, olive, tallow and cocoanut base
- Pumice soap I
- Sand soap II
- Settled soap for fulling
- Shaving cream I
- Shaving cream II
- Tallow base (leanest of the stated range)
- Tallow base (richest of the stated range)
- Tallow base, kettle charge
- Tallow, palm and cocoanut base
- Textile soap on corn oil
- Textile soap on red oil
- Toilet soap on hardened fish oil, I
- Wool scouring soap I
- Wool scouring soap II
- Wool scouring soap III