But you can't make soap from milk alone. Other ingredients could include natural
oils from seeds, nuts, and vegetables, such as soybeans or coconuts. Soap has
two main ingredients; lye and fat. When lye combines with a fat, chemical
interaction hardens the oils, creating a bar of hard soap. When our
great-grandmothers made their all natural soap, they used wood ashes and lard:
the ashes were soaked in water, which leached out lye. Cooking lard with lye
created soap. Original lye soaps were unscented and very harsh. They were also
used for scrubbing laundry and floors, so their harshness helped pioneers get
their clothes and homesas well as their familiesclean.