Testing Lard vs Shea Butter

Well this is my third experiment in which I'd like to get to know if Lard will be similar with Shea Butter. They have similar fatty acid profile except that Shea butter has more Stearic FA than Lard which has more Palmitic FA.



The recipe was:

Lard / Shea Butter: 70%
Coconut Oil: 22%
Castor Oil: 8%

Lye Concentration: 33%
Lye discount: Lard: 3%, Shea: 1,5%

along with Salt 3%, Sugar 5%, Sodium Citrate 4%, FO Cranberry. CPOPed for 10min @ 60°C, unmold and cut after 6 hours. Mixed when lye was at 25°C and oils at 40°C so as for them not to solidify. Used blue and red pigments and a few drops of TD to both, so as to have different colors.

As you can see I used a lower number in lye discount for Shea Butter. Someone can understand by the SAP values of shea (0.128 ) and lard (0.141) that there is already a real lye discount in Shea as there are less fatty acids to be saponified in it, leaving room for other ingredients that gives the known feeling Shea Butter gives in soap and leaves on skin.

Lard is also known to have a skin friendly feeling so by using a different lye discount I wanted to counteract somehow the different unsaponifiables amount between them. I don't think that the 1.5% would make it similar but just wanted to be somehow fare to lard.




Shea butter won the race to very thick trace and if I make again with that amount I will for sure use a 30% Lye concentration.


So another 60 days counter just started for them to be tested...

I like your approach, and am enjoying your experiment threads.

Ooh this should be good! Can't wait to see how they compare to each other once cured

Interesting experiment; keep us posted.

Interesting! This is my guess on how it will turn out:

Lard will feel creamier and bubble up easier. It will be very nice at 4 week and a little nicer at 6 weeks...
Shea lather will feel heavier and maybe leave a bit of a film-feeling. It will improve drastically during cure, feeling much better at a few months old than it did at 4 weeks old.

This is just a hunch, but I'm really interested to see if my hunch matches up at all with reality.

The lard soap looks smoother and creamier.

What causes those spots in the shea soap?

Did the Shea butter not get fully dissolved?

Well those spots might be stearic acid. The coloring procedure was that I mixed Lye (~25°C) in Oils (~40°C), hand stirred with a spatula, dropped 4-5drops of pigment colors along with 1-2 drops of TD, and then I used the stick blender to better blend the color drops into the mix.

Shea butter was a great runner to trace so I think that its stearic acid started to saponify first without getting any/much color along.

When I licked those white spots the next day, they were soapy sweet!

So it might be the well known "stearic spots" phenomenon but instead of high water as the reason, as I have managed to create it once



it might be the "didn't catch up much color because I turned into soap already".

With Shea butter I moved very quickly to the molding phase as if I was a few seconds late I would have made a "soap on a stick-blender".

Did you melt the Shea butter first?

penelopejane said:

Did you melt the Shea butter first?

Click to expand...

Yes it was fully melted, then dropped into it the also melted coconut and then Castor oil.

The exactly same melting procedure was done for lard.

snappyllama said:

Interesting! This is my guess on how it will turn out:

Lard will feel creamier and bubble up easier. It will be very nice at 4 week and a little nicer at 6 weeks...
Shea lather will feel heavier and maybe leave a bit of a film-feeling. It will improve drastically during cure, feeling much better at a few months old than it did at 4 weeks old.

This is just a hunch, but I'm really interested to see if my hunch matches up at all with reality.

Click to expand...

Well from my early testing after 2 months curing, I have gained the following:

Lard bubbles a little easier, maybe because palmitic acid is more soluble than stearic acid, or because the real fatty acids profile of lard is different from what soapcalc is saying.

They both have a very silky lather and I think that lard feels much more silkier maybe because it lathers more. Both soaps also last very long in the bathroom!

I will give these soaps to other 2 soapers so as to listen to other opinions too.

For the specific recipes, I think lard is the winner for the fact that it is cheeper than shea butter where I live (4E vs 12E per kg) and it gives more (if not the same) silky feeling to my skin.

I was afraid that 8% Castor and 5% sugar would give a very water soluble bars, but these ingredients are just perfect for the specific fatty acids profile of the recipe.

Will add more comments when I'll get the feedback from the other soapers too.

I am glad your results agree with mine! Another lardy person!

This will be fun and educational to follow.