The Hygiene Revolution (3)
Splosh-!
Dark, murky lye poured into the boiling pig fat. Instantly, a violent chemical reaction erupted within the cauldron. Oil splattered in every direction, white steam billowed upward, and a pungent, acrid stench filled the air.
“Ugh…!”
Josef blatantly covered his nose and scrambled backward. Sarka, too, clamped her apron over her nose and mouth, squeezing her eyes shut.
Only Janos remained, his brow furrowed deeply as he gripped the wooden spatula and held his ground.
“You said to stir, right?”
“That’s right. Stir without rest. Until the water and oil meld into a single, thick consistency.”
“Haa… My Lord, you truly have a remarkable talent for working people to the bone.”
Janos grumbled, but he began to move his arms. A sharp, stinging odor rose from the pot.
Saponification.
It was the process where the fatty acids in the oil and the alkali in the lye combined to transform into glycerin and soap. This process was tedious beyond belief. Without a modern mechanical stirrer, the only source of power here was the strength of a man’s forearms.
While Janos labored, dripping with sweat, I wasn’t just standing by. I immediately moved to a smaller cauldron prepared nearby. I pulled the burning logs from the furnace, leaving only the glowing red embers. A gentle heat began to warm the pot softly.
I dropped a lump of pure, refined white pig fat into the pot. At such a low temperature that it didn’t even hiss, the fat melted into a clear liquid. Then, I began to peel the apple skins I had set aside in a basket.
“Your Majesty, are you truly going to put those in?”
Josef, watching from a distance, could no longer contain himself. “I repeat, if you mix organic matter with soap, it will rot. Besides, boiling apple skins in pig fat will only leave you with a foul, burnt-sugar stench.”
“That only applies if you boil them vigorously.”
I brushed off Josef’s concerns and carefully poured the apple skins into the oil.
Plop, plop-
The red skins sank into the transparent oil. I held my palm near the pot to gauge the temperature. It was warm, but not hot. Just the temperature of a pleasant bath. At this heat, the cell walls of the apples wouldn’t break down. Instead, only the natural essential oils and waxes hidden within the skins would slowly seep into the fat.
This was Maceration. It was the foundation of perfume manufacturing and the most elegant technique for capturing scents that were sensitive to heat.
As time passed, the once-clear oil began to take on a faint, reddish hue. And amidst the acrid smell of lye that filled the workshop, a fresh, crisp fragrance began to rise.
Sarka sniffed the air.
“Oh…? It’s the scent of apples! It really smells like apples!”
Josef’s eyes widened in shock. Despite the fact that heat was being applied, there was no smell of frying or burning—only the fresh, vibrant fragrance of raw fruit swirling within the pot.
“H-how… how can such a scent come from mere pig fat…?”
“I told you. I’m not boiling it.”
I nodded in satisfaction, strained the oil through a sieve to remove the skins, and now, in my hands, I held pig fat that smelled of apples.
Just then, Janos shouted, gasping for air.
“My Lord! My arms won’t move anymore! Isn’t this enough?”
I turned to see that the contents of his cauldron had turned into a thick, paste-like substance. When he lifted the spatula, it left a clear trail. It was the signal that saponification was complete.
“Good. You’ve done well.”
I had Janos step back and immediately grabbed a sack of salt. Josef swallowed hard, his expression tense once more. In his eyes, I must have looked like a madman about to throw ash into a finished product.
Without hesitation, I poured the salt into the cauldron.
Swish-
White salt crystals cascaded over the thick soap batter. I gripped the spatula and stirred the pot with all my might.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
At first, it seemed as if nothing would happen. But just as Josef was about to let out a sigh of relief—or perhaps a scoff—
Gurgle, pop-
A strange sound came from the pot. Just as cheese curdles when vinegar is dropped into milk, the evenly mixed, thick batter suddenly began to clump together in soft, white masses.
“Haa! W-what is this…! Your Majesty, what kind of magic have you performed?”
“Magic? No, this is chemistry.”
Salting-out.
It was the foundation of a separation process that used differences in solubility to force the desired substance to precipitate. As the sodium ions from the salt took control of the water, the soap molecules, having nowhere else to go, clung to each other and rose to the top to escape.
The contents of the pot were now perfectly divided into two. At the top, a snow-white, pure mass of soap (Curd). At the bottom, only a dark, murky, reddish liquid remained. This was the excess lye that ruined soap quality, the smelly impurities, and the glycerin residue that made soap soft.
I scooped out the white mass with a ladle.
“Do you see, Josef? This is soap made from the pig fat you so despised.”
The white lumps floating in the pot were so fair and clean that it was hard to believe they were made from pig fat.
“I-impossible…”
Josef approached the pot as if possessed. With trembling hands, he lightly pressed the mass of soap. It was hard.
Originally, soap made by mixing lye and oil would result in a soft, mushy product. It would crumble under pressure and melt quickly upon contact with water, forcing commoners to store it in small jars to make it last. But soap that had met salt was different. It had transformed into a solid as hard as stone.
In this era, white, hard soap meant Castile soap—a symbol of wealth and power. That precious commodity had been born from nothing more than common lye and pig fat.
While Josef was lost in a trance, stroking the soap, I adjusted my leather gloves and spoke.
“It’s too early to be surprised. The real work starts now.”
Even if I took the soap out and let it harden as it was, its cleaning power would be excellent. But this Curd Soap had been stripped of all its oils and moisture, making it incredibly stiff against the skin. It was no different from modern laundry soap. That was exactly why I needed the apple oil I had prepared earlier.
I ladled the hot soap batter onto the workbench. Then, I poured the fragrant oil, infused with apple skins, generously over the steaming white mass and began to knead the hot batter with my gloved hands.
Thwack, thwack-
I kneaded and crushed the soap batter vigorously, as if making bread. The squelching sound gradually changed into a firm, elastic thud. Since the saponification reaction was already complete, the components of the apple oil wouldn’t be destroyed even when mixed into the batter. The oil seeped between the soap molecules, forming a moisturizing barrier, and the apple scent, trapped by the heat, bloomed even richer and fuller.
Rebatching and Superfatting.
These were modern processes that neutralized the harshness of the strong alkali and gave the soap the wings of moisture and fragrance. The once-pure white soap batter, having absorbed the apple oil, began to turn a subtle ivory color, taking on a luxurious sheen. It was soft like clay now, but once cooled, it would become a gem as hard and smooth as marble.
I finished the work by filling a wooden mold with the steaming soap batter.
“There. It’s done.”
At my words, Josef approached the mold as if bewitched. He brought his nose close to the soap and took a deep breath.
Sniff, sniff-
“It truly… smells of apples.”
Josef’s voice trembled thinly. “It is not an overwhelming scent like expensive musk or ambergris. But…”
His expression suggested that, for that very reason, it was even more shocking. It wasn’t an artificial scent created by pouring in expensive perfumes, but the freshness of nature itself. And the base ingredient was the pig fat he had so despised.
I waited for the soap in the mold to cool slightly, then used a wooden knife to cut it into appropriate sizes. Rectangular pieces of soap. They were still soft from the lingering heat, but they would be as hard as stone once cooled. I picked out the best-looking ones and held them out to Sarka, who was standing there blankly.
“Take these.”
“Pardon…?”
I shoved the pieces of soap into her apron pocket. “These are for testing. Use them yourself and report back to me on how they feel, if they lather well, and if they make your skin feel tight. As for the rest, divide them among your fellow maids or use them all yourself—do as you please.”
“Y-Your Majesty! How could I take such precious things…!”
Sarka clutched her apron, restless. “Things like this are only for noble ladies, how could someone like me…”
“What is so precious about them?”
I chuckled and pointed to the materials scattered on the workbench. “You saw it with your own eyes. All that went into it was common pig fat, ashes scraped from the hearth, and leftover apple skins.”
“B-but…”
“Don’t feel burdened. If you only count the cost of the materials, it’s no different from the soap you use every day.”
Sarka hugged the soap to her chest with a tearful face. She inhaled the apple scent from the soap, wearing an ecstatic expression as if she owned the world.
“Thank you… thank you so much, Your Majesty…”
I gave Sarka some instructions. “It doesn’t matter if you use it right away, but if you want to experience the best quality, let it dry in the shade for about a week. The structure will only set firmly once the internal moisture has completely evaporated.”
Sarka hugged the soap and bowed repeatedly. “Yes! I will keep that in mind! I will treat it more preciously than my own life!”
“No, there’s no need for that…”
Just then, Janos, who had been silently watching the situation, spoke up cautiously.
“My Lord, wait a moment. I, too, am impressed by your alchemy… or rather, your chemistry skills.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ll grant you that pig fat, lye, and apples are cheap. But isn’t salt a bit different?”
Janos gestured with his chin toward the empty salt sack in the corner of the workbench. “Salt is so expensive it’s called ‘white gold.’ Bohemia has no sea and no rock salt mines, so we import it all from Poland. The amount you poured into that pot alone must be worth several silver coins…”
Janos’s brow furrowed. “Isn’t this like sprinkling gold dust just to make a pot of soap? And you want to distribute this to commoners for a pittance? The cost far outweighs the benefit. The royal treasury will be drained.”
Janos’s concern was valid. Salt was expensive. In the landlocked nation of Bohemia, salt was a survival necessity and a high-priced strategic resource. If I poured away that precious salt every time I made soap, it would be a business destined for economic ruin. But that was only because Janos didn’t understand chemistry.
“Janos, do you think salt disappears like sugar when it dissolves in water?”
“Well… doesn’t it disappear when you put it in water? Like when you put salt in soup, the salty taste remains, but the salt itself is gone.”
“Not being visible and disappearing are two different things.”
I pointed to the dark red liquid—the wastewater—remaining in the pot after I had scooped out the soap. “The salt I put in earlier is still right here in this liquid. Not a single grain has disappeared.”
“Pardon?”
“Salt does not participate in the saponification reaction. It only dissolves in the water to push the soap out, and then it remains behind with the water.”
I scooped up a ladle of the black wastewater to show him. “What do you think would happen if I boiled this water again to evaporate the moisture? The water would turn into steam and fly off into the sky, but salt has no wings. It would eventually return to the bottom as white crystals.”
Janos’s jaw dropped.
“T-then…”
“Exactly. It means it can be recycled infinitely. Once you cover the initial investment cost, the salt cost is almost zero. At most, there would be a slight loss from spilling during the process.”
Janos muttered blankly. “Huh, infinite salt… that’s the most bizarre thing I’ve heard in the last few days. It’s even more absurd than when alchemists try to scam people by saying they can turn lead into gold.”
The fact that precious salt, which he had considered a consumable, could be permanently recycled—the economic ripple effect seemed to have dealt a significant shock to Janos’s quick-calculating brain. And there was one more person who couldn’t withstand that shock.
Thud.
It was Josef. He knelt on the floor as if his legs had given out. His gaze darted between the black wastewater left at the bottom of the pot and the ivory-colored soap held in Sarka’s arms.
“Your Majesty.”
“Hmm?”
“I… I was wrong.”
His voice was trembling thinly. “For the past 30 years… I have spent my days staring blankly at the sky, waiting for the soap to harden. I worried about the humidity ruining it when it rained, and I fretted over the lack of wind… I believed that those tedious years were a natural process, the dedication of a craftsman.”
Josef covered his face with his rough hands. Deep wrinkles overlapped between his fingers. “But in just half a day, Your Majesty… you have surpassed the level I spent my entire life trying to reach. And with the most humble of materials, at that.”
His shoulders shook with sobs. It was a sense of loss, as if his entire life had been denied. The 30 years he had endured with the pride of being the best craftsman had crumbled like a sandcastle before the truth of chemistry. “The soap I made until now… was nothing more than expensive trash. I am no craftsman. I was just an ignorant old man trapped in his own stubbornness.”
The arrogant Meister of the Prague Soap Guild was nowhere to be found. Only a pathetic old man remained, bowing his head in shame at his own ignorance.
I approached Josef without a word and placed a hand on the kneeling craftsman’s shoulder.
“You were not wrong, Josef.”
“Y-Your Majesty…?”
“You simply didn’t know. You had no choice but to wait because you didn’t know how to understand the laws of nature, the principles of handling matter. And ignorance is not a sin.”
I pulled him up firmly. “The time you spent waiting while looking at the sky, that persistence—that is what made you the best craftsman in Prague. I value that persistence.”
“Your Majesty…”
Josef looked up at me with tear-filled eyes.
“Josef, you are the head of the Prague Soap Guild. I need your soap workshop’s facilities, your manpower, and your seasoned experience.”
“You… need me? An ignorant fool like me?”
“Yes. I provide the theory. But turning it into reality is the job of you and the guild.”
I pointed to the soap Sarka was holding. “Cover Prague—no, all of Bohemia—with this soap. Forget about the high-and-mighty Castile soap the nobles use. From now on, we will stamp out this apple soap like bricks and flood the market with it.”
Josef straightened his clothes. He wiped his wet eyes with his sleeve and bowed his head more respectfully and deeply than ever before. It was a gesture of loyalty offered not as a stubborn old craftsman, but as a technician to a great monarch.
“I… I shall obey your command! Even if I have to devote the rest of my life to it, I will make your fragrance cover all of Bohemia!”