Have you ever wondered how people in the Middle Ages made their own soap? Unlike today, when soap is easily purchased, medieval households often crafted their own using simple but surprising ingredients. A 14th-century English recipe reveals just how they did it, offering a step-by-step guide to making white soap.
Medieval Recipes
This recipe comes from The Trinity Encyclopedia, an anonymous 14th-century English manuscript that compiles a remarkable collection of craft recipes. Translated from Middle English by Mark Clarke, the text preserves the practical knowledge of medieval craftsmen, offering unusually detailed instructions for manufacturing pigments, dyeing cloth, preparing skins and furs, imitating expensive imported leathers, counterfeiting semi-precious materials, and even making confectionery.
Among its many recipes are several for making soap, including one that describes how to create white soap “in another manner.” This rare insight into medieval soap-making reveals a precise, methodical approach to an everyday necessity.
What You Will Need:
Ashes from an oak tree – for making lye
Tallow – rendered animal fat
Lime – heated to become quicklime
Salt – enhances soap texture
Flour – helps thicken the mixture
Water – essential for mixing
A pot – large enough for boiling
A pan – for heating ingredients
A sturdy stirring stick
Step-by-Step Instructions
A bas-de-page scene of a man and a woman with a cooking pot and a bucket. British Library MS Royal 10 E IV fol. 108
1. Preparing the Lye
The recipe begins by telling you to “clean shifted ashes of oak” into a pot that is three or four gallons in size, and then add two gallons “scalding hot water to it.”
Stir well, cover, and let the mixture sit for 24 hours.
This mixture, now called lye, needs an additional 2 ounces of quicklime and another 2 gallons of boiling water.
Stir again and let stand for another day.
2. Mixing the Soap Ingredients
In a brazen (brass) pan, bring three quarts of the lye to a boil.
The recipe states:
“And make it seethe, and then when it does, immediately take and add to it half a pound of nice clean tallow of a sheep that is completely melted beforehand.”
Stir continuously with a pot-stick or large stirring stick.
Add half an ounce of white salt, and mix well.
Separately, mix ¼ ounce of wheat flour with a little cold lye, strain it through a linen cloth, and add it to the boiling mixture:
“Then take a quarter of an ounce of nice wheat flour and mix it with a little portion of your cold lye, and then draw it through a linen cloth into a dish in the manner of a starch.”
3. Stirring Until Thickened
Keep stirring until the mixture thickens:
“Continually be stirring in it until your material becomes so thick that you can see the base of your vessel during the stirring, and also such that it stands when you push it with your pot-stick without any running together again.”
If the mixture rises, beat it back down with a ladle.
If the lye and tallow separate, gradually add more lye, one quart at a time, until everything binds together:
“Until your materials hold themselves all well together in your pan without any separating or parting one from another.”
4. Moulding and Drying the Soap
Once thickened, remove the mixture from the fire.
Pour it into a pre-moistened mould and place it on a level surface.
Let it dry into a firm cake of soap.
The final instruction reads:
“Let it dry up in that same mould into a nice cake of soap as the manner is, and then it is done.”
The recipe also notes that if you want to make larger portions, you simply need bigger pots and pans along with increased quantities of ingredients.
Bringing Medieval Soap-Making to Life
This recipe, and many others, can be found in Tricks of the Medieval Trades: A Collection of 14th Century English Craft Recipes by Mark Clarke, published by Archetype Books. Click here to read more from the book, which you can buy from the publisher or on Amazon.com
Have you ever wondered how people in the Middle Ages made their own soap? Unlike today, when soap is easily purchased, medieval households often crafted their own using simple but surprising ingredients. A 14th-century English recipe reveals just how they did it, offering a step-by-step guide to making white soap.
Medieval Recipes
This recipe comes from The Trinity Encyclopedia, an anonymous 14th-century English manuscript that compiles a remarkable collection of craft recipes. Translated from Middle English by Mark Clarke, the text preserves the practical knowledge of medieval craftsmen, offering unusually detailed instructions for manufacturing pigments, dyeing cloth, preparing skins and furs, imitating expensive imported leathers, counterfeiting semi-precious materials, and even making confectionery.
Among its many recipes are several for making soap, including one that describes how to create white soap “in another manner.” This rare insight into medieval soap-making reveals a precise, methodical approach to an everyday necessity.
What You Will Need:
Step-by-Step Instructions
1. Preparing the Lye
The recipe begins by telling you to “clean shifted ashes of oak” into a pot that is three or four gallons in size, and then add two gallons “scalding hot water to it.”
2. Mixing the Soap Ingredients
“And make it seethe, and then when it does, immediately take and add to it half a pound of nice clean tallow of a sheep that is completely melted beforehand.”
“Then take a quarter of an ounce of nice wheat flour and mix it with a little portion of your cold lye, and then draw it through a linen cloth into a dish in the manner of a starch.”
3. Stirring Until Thickened
“Continually be stirring in it until your material becomes so thick that you can see the base of your vessel during the stirring, and also such that it stands when you push it with your pot-stick without any running together again.”
“Until your materials hold themselves all well together in your pan without any separating or parting one from another.”
4. Moulding and Drying the Soap
The final instruction reads:
“Let it dry up in that same mould into a nice cake of soap as the manner is, and then it is done.”
The recipe also notes that if you want to make larger portions, you simply need bigger pots and pans along with increased quantities of ingredients.
Bringing Medieval Soap-Making to Life
This recipe, and many others, can be found in Tricks of the Medieval Trades: A Collection of 14th Century English Craft Recipes by Mark Clarke, published by Archetype Books. Click here to read more from the book, which you can buy from the publisher or on Amazon.com
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