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Traditional

Kitchen tallow bar

Three plain white soap bars with smooth cut faces beside a bowl of rendered tallow and a dish of coconut oil on a deep green backdrop

The plain bar that households made from rendered beef fat, with a quarter coconut oil so it lathers: hard, white, long-lasting and creamy. Unscented, with nothing added, and cheap if you render the fat yourself.

Skill
Beginner
Method
Cold process
Batch
1000 g of oils about 1433 g of batter
Hands-on
1 hour
Cure
4 weeks
Gel phase
Either way gel or not, both work
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What you need

For 1000 g of oils, which fills a 1.5 litre loaf mould. Weigh everything, liquids included.

Edible Tallow · 75.0 % 750 g 26.46 oz
Coconut Oil · 25.0 % 250 g 8.82 oz
Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) · the lye, 100 % pure 143.0 g 5.04 oz
Distilled water · for a 33 % lye solution 290.3 g 10.24 oz
Superfat
5 %
Temperatures
Tallow and coconut oil at 43 to 46 °C (110 to 115 °F), lye solution at 35 to 43 °C (95 to 110 °F)

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Method

  1. Get ready

    Put on splash goggles, nitrile gloves and long sleeves, open a window or turn on the extractor fan, and keep children and pets out of the room. Line the loaf mould and set it on a level surface where it can stay for a day.

  2. Start with clean tallow

    Use tallow that is white to pale cream and smells of almost nothing when warm. If it smells beefy or has brown specks, render it once more in water, as the tips explain, before you weigh it.

  3. Weigh the fats

    Weigh 750 g tallow and 250 g coconut oil into the soaping pot.

  4. Make the lye solution

    Weigh 290.3 g distilled water into a heat-safe jug and 143 g sodium hydroxide into a dry container. At the open window or under the fan, pour the lye slowly into the water, never the water onto the lye, and stir until clear; leave it to cool, labelled and out of reach.

  5. Melt the fats

    Melt the tallow and coconut oil together on the lowest heat until completely clear; tallow needs more warmth than most fats. Let them cool to 43 to 46 °C (110 to 115 °F).

  6. Check the temperatures

    Carry on when the lye solution has cooled to 35 to 43 °C (95 to 110 °F). With three-quarters tallow the fats start to cloud and set not far below 40 °C (104 °F); if they turn hazy, warm them again until clear.

  7. Blend to light trace

    Pour the lye solution into the fats down the shaft of the stick blender and blend in short pulses, stirring between them. Tallow and coconut trace quickly, so check after every burst and stop when a drizzle leaves a faint line on the surface.

  8. Pour and cover

    Pour into the mould, tap it on the worktop to raise air bubbles and smooth the top. Cover it with a board and a light towel for a day; if the centre darkens and starts to swell or crack in a warm room, lift the towel off.

  9. Clean up

    With your gloves still on, wipe the batter off the pot and tools with paper towels into the bin, then wash them in hot soapy water.

  10. Unmould and cut

    After about 24 hours, when the loaf is firm, unmould it with gloves on and cut it into bars about 2.5 cm (1 in) thick the same day. Tallow bars get harder to cut cleanly with every day they wait.

  11. Cure

    Stand the bars on edge in a dry, airy room for four to six weeks, turning them now and then. They are firm within days, but the cure lets the last of the water go, and a dry tallow bar lasts a long time in use.

Tips

  • This is the plain classic. For a milder, creamier bar with olive and castor oil, see our creamy tallow and olive bar; for the same farmhouse idea with pork fat, our old-fashioned lard bar.
  • To render tallow, cut beef suet, the hard fat around the kidneys, into small pieces and simmer it in about twice its volume of water for two to three hours. Strain it, let it set in the fridge, lift off the disc of fat and scrape the soft grey layer from its underside. Suet gives the whitest, mildest-smelling tallow; trimmings from roasts render darker.
  • Mutton tallow works too. It makes a slightly harder bar and smells a little stronger. Its lye comes out almost the same, but choose Mutton Tallow in the calculator so the numbers are its own.
  • Tallow soap is hard enough to cut into thin bars, but it can be brittle once it has cured. Plane the edges with a vegetable peeler in the first week if you want them smooth.

Why make it

Three parts beef tallow to one of coconut oil makes one of the hardest, longest-lasting bars here, hardness 59 on our scale, with a dense, creamy lather and moderate cleansing of 20, so it suits everyday hand and body washing and a busy kitchen sink. Tallow is the fat soap is named after: Simmons and Appleton noted in 1908 that the Latin sapo is related to sebum, tallow, and that the word first meant tallow treated with ashes. They also give the reason for the coconut, since tallow alone makes a very hard soap that lathers poorly. Makers and their customers often describe tallow soap as gentle and not drying; that reputation rests on long experience rather than trials. The bar is only as good as the fat, so it needs fresh, well-rendered tallow, and it is no use to anyone who avoids animal products.

Sources

  • The Handbook of Soap Manufacture · Scott, Greenwood & Son (W. H. Simmons and H. A. Appleton), 1908

What tradition, makers' experience and research say about soaps like this, each labelled for what it is. It is not medical advice, and no soap treats a skin condition: if you have one, ask a doctor or pharmacist.

What the numbers say

  • Lauric acid 12.3 %
  • Myristic acid 7.7 %
  • Palmitic acid 21.0 %
  • Stearic acid 17.6 %
  • Oleic acid 30.0 %
  • Linoleic acid 3.1 %
  • α-Linolenic acid 1.2 %
  • Other 6.7 %

Saturated : unsaturated 63 : 37

Hardness 59 above 29–54
Cleansing 20 12–22
Conditioning 34 below 44–69
Bubbly lather 20 14–46
Creamy lather 39 16–48

Computed from the fatty acids of the fats above. The bands are what the craft has settled on, not chemistry — a bar outside one is not wrong.

Try it differently

7 variations

The same soap with one thing moved. Each opens in the calculator ready to change again.

From the guides

All guides
Intermediate 10 min read

Lard and tallow: soaping with animal fats

Why lard and tallow make hard, mild, creamy soap, how to render and store them at home, how beef, mutton and pork fat differ, and classic recipes.
Beginner 7 min read

Unmoulding and cutting soap

When cold process soap is ready to come out of the mould, how to release it from silicone, lined and cavity moulds, and how to cut, bevel and stamp even bars.
Beginner 8 min read

Curing and storing handmade soap

What curing does to cold process soap and what it doesn't, how long it takes, how to set bars up to cure, how to tell when they're done, and how to store them.

Guides with this recipe

Where these proportions come from

Tallow was the main soap fat of British and American homes and soap works until vegetable oils became cheap. This bar keeps it at three-quarters of the oils and adds a quarter coconut oil for the lather tallow alone lacks, a pairing the soap trade already used by 1908, with the lye weighed for a 5 % superfat in a 33 % lye solution.

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