Olive oil has been used in soap making for millennia, particularly in the Mediterranean and Middle East, and that’s not set to change any time. Olive oil is an amazing substance – not only is it widely used in cookery and depending on where your oil is from, the taste can vary hugely and there are some amazingly tasty extra virgin olive oils out there. But there are enormous benefits for skincare too.
Olive oil is rich in antioxidants, vitamin E and oleic acids making it an oil with excellent moisturising and healing properties. It can penetrate the skin and provide long lasting hydration. Vitamin E and antioxidants help combat signs of aging. Olive oil is quite the wonder product so it’s no wonder it’s so widely used, not only within beauty products where it is applied topically, but is also integral to a healthy diet.
It goes without saying the best olive oil to use would be the freshest extra virgin olive oil you can lay your hands on, but that’s not really an option in the UK!
The Olive Oil We Use in our Soap
When it comes to soap making, we use refined olive oil. There are several reasons for this:
· The lighter colour of refined oil is more suitable to use in our soaps.
· It’s cheaper than using extra virgin.
· Using extra virgin olive oil in soapmaking would be a waste of top quality oil, plus it has quite a strong colour and scent (we have experimented with it!).
· We don’t make exclusively olive oil soaps - also known as Castile soap (see below) where it would make more sense to use a virgin olive oil.
· It would only be worth using extra virgin if we lived in the Mediterranean and had an abundance of olive oil on our doorstep.
The downside is that refined olive oil usually comes from the last pressing of oil and is extracted with a chemical process (hexene extraction), then virgin oils are added in. This is perfectly safe as the oil we use is food grade, but it isn’t from the fresh pressings of olives.
We use a high amount of olive oil in our soap – in fact more than 50% of the oil in our bars is olive oil. We’ve found it makes for a wonderfully moisturising bar of soap that feels great on the skin. Because of this we also cure our soap bars for 6 weeks before sale to ensure that you get a harder bar.
Olive Oil Soaps
There are several types of ‘pure’ olive oil soaps that you can buy:
Castile Soap
It is thought that Castile soap originated in Aleppo and was brought to the Castile region of Spain where they swapped laurel oil for olive oil because laurel oil wasn’t widely available. Castile soap is a pure soap nowadays made from a range of vegetable oils such as olive, sunflower and coconut oil. It can be made as either a hard bar or a liquid soap. You’ve probably noticed Castile soap in the shops at some point, with Dr Bronners being a leading brand of liquid Castile soap.
Savon de Marseille
This soap has been made in the Marseille area of France for hundreds of years, again based on olive oil. These soaps are quite recognisable as the large green soap cubes you can buy quite widely. Traditionally, the soap is made by mixing sea water (from the Mediterranean) with olive oil, and the lye is from alkaline ash from sea plants. This mixture is then heated for several days while being stirred continuously (a hot process soap). It is then poured into a mould and allowed to set when it is cut into bars, stamped, and left to harden. The whole process can take up to a month.
Nowadays with Savon de Marseille being a mass produced soap, it can be made from all sorts of oils, not just olive oil, palm oil being one of them. The soaps can come in quite a range of scents and colours too. So do watch out if you buy Savon de Marseille as your soap may not contain the pure olive oil you hoped for!
Aleppo Soap
This is an ancient soap named after Aleppo in Syria and was traditionally made with olive oil with bay laurel oil added. It was traditionally made in a similar way to Savon de Marseille with the oil mixture being heated and cooked with the lye. Aleppo soap has been made more recently using the cold process method with herbs and essential oils added.
Hopefully this has given you some insight into how olives have been traditionally used in soap making.
Comments