Made With LOVE: The Story Behind a Lard, Coconut & Castor Oil Soap
Some bars of soap are simply made.
Others have a story behind them.
This one was made with LOVE.
For this Boner’s Botanicals project, we wanted to make a straightforward cold-process bar using three hardworking fats and oils: rendered pork fat (lard), coconut oil, and castor oil.
The formula is simple:
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75% rendered pork fat (lard)
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20% coconut oil
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5% castor oil
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Water: 33% of total oil weight
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Lemon eucalyptus essential oil: 0.5 oz per pound of oil
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Peppermint essential oil: 0.3 oz per pound of oil
The result is a traditional-style bar built around a fat that has been used in soapmaking for generations.
And somewhere along the way, a batch of soap became a celebration of hope, faith, and love.
The video below is a soap making tutorial of LOVE bar soap made by Boner's Botanicals.
Why Use Lard in Soap?
Let's talk about the elephant—or perhaps the pig—in the room.
Lard makes excellent soap.
Rendered pork fat, commonly called lard, contains a mixture of fatty acids including oleic, palmitic, stearic, and linoleic acids. During saponification, those fats react with sodium hydroxide and are transformed into the soap molecules that give the finished bar its characteristics.
And that fatty-acid profile gives lard several useful qualities for soapmaking.
1. It Helps Produce a Hard, Durable Bar
Palmitic and stearic acids are saturated fatty acids that contribute to the hardness and durability of bar soap.
Lard contains both, giving it a strong foundation for a traditional bar of soap.
That matters.
Nobody wants to watch a beautiful handmade bar disappear down the drain after a handful of showers.
2. It Brings a Creamy Character to the Lather
Lard contains a combination of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids rather than relying heavily on a single type of fatty acid.
That makes it useful when formulating a balanced soap.
The result isn't intended to be the giant, aggressive bubble machine that a high-coconut-oil soap can become. Instead, the lard provides the foundation while coconut oil and castor oil contribute their own characteristics.
3. Its Fatty-Acid Profile Is Well Suited to Soapmaking
The fatty acids present in lard—including oleic, palmitic, stearic, and linoleic acids—help determine the characteristics of the soap produced during saponification.
That doesn't mean a bar of lard soap simply retains all the properties of the original fat. Saponification changes the chemistry.
But the fatty-acid composition of the starting fat still matters because it determines the types of soap molecules produced.
That's one reason experienced soapmakers pay attention to the oils and fats going into the pot.
Lard vs. Beef Tallow
Now for the fun comparison.
If beef tallow makes excellent soap, why use lard?
The answer isn't that one is universally superior.
They're different fats.
And technically, that's an important distinction:
Lard is rendered pork fat.
Tallow generally refers to rendered fat from animals such as cattle or sheep.
Beef tallow tends to contain more stearic acid and somewhat less oleic acid than pork lard. Published compositional data place beef tallow at roughly 40–43% oleic acid and 20–24% stearic acid, while pork lard is around 43–47% oleic acid and 13–14% stearic acid. Pork lard also generally contains more linoleic acid.
That difference can influence the character of the resulting soap.
What Lard Brings to the Formula
The relatively higher oleic-acid content of lard gives it a different fatty-acid balance from beef tallow.
Lard also tends to contain more linoleic acid than beef tallow.
For our particular recipe, however, we're not asking the lard to do everything.
We're using it at 75%, then bringing in coconut oil at 20% and castor oil at 5%.
That gives each ingredient a job.
Beef Tallow's Strength
Beef tallow has its own characteristics. Its higher stearic-acid content can contribute strongly to a hard, firm bar, which is one reason beef tallow has such a long history in traditional soapmaking.
So the comparison isn't really:
Lard = good. Beef tallow = bad.
It's:
Different fats produce different starting points for formulation.
And that's where soapmaking gets interesting.
Why We Chose Lard for LOVE
For this bar, lard gives us the traditional animal-fat foundation we wanted while leaving room for the other oils to do their jobs.
At 75%, it provides the backbone of the recipe.
Then:
20% coconut oil brings cleansing ability and abundant lather.
5% castor oil helps support a stable, creamy lather.
The result is a formulation where no single oil has to carry the entire load.
That's the beauty of formulating soap.
You're not simply choosing an oil.
You're building a team.
What About the Skin Benefits?
This is where we need to separate what the raw fat contains from what the finished soap does.
Lard contains fatty acids that are also found naturally in skin lipids. But once the lard has been turned into soap through saponification, we're dealing with a completely different chemical product.
So we're not going to tell you that washing with lard soap will cure eczema, repair damaged skin, or provide some miraculous nutritional benefit.
That's not what soap does.
What we can say is much simpler:
Lard is a traditional and highly useful soapmaking fat, and its fatty-acid composition makes it well suited to producing a hard, durable bar with a creamy character.
That's enough.
The chemistry speaks for itself.
Spes. Fides. Amor.
Hope.
Faith.
Love.
Those three words became part of the identity of this bar.
Spes, Fides & Amor is Latin for Hope, Faith & Love.
And while the soap itself is made from very practical ingredients—lard, coconut oil, castor oil, water, and essential oils—the idea behind it is anything but complicated.
Sometimes we make things because they're useful.
Sometimes we make things because they're beautiful.
And sometimes we make something because we want it to mean something.
This bar was a little of all three.
From the Pot to the Bar
The actual soapmaking process follows the familiar cold-process method.
The oils are prepared, the lye solution is carefully made, and the two are brought together. As the mixture begins to emulsify and thicken, the essential oils are incorporated before the soap is poured into its mold.
Then comes the part every soapmaker learns to respect:
waiting.
The freshly poured soap has to complete the saponification process and then cure.
A bar of handmade soap may look finished long before it is truly ready.
That's part of the craft.
You make it.
You wait.
Then you finally get to use it.
Made With LOVE
That's ultimately what this project was about.
Not making the most complicated soap.
Not using the most expensive ingredients.
Just taking a few useful materials, putting them together thoughtfully, and turning them into something people can actually use.
A traditional animal fat.
A couple of plant oils.
Two aromatic essential oils.
And a little message wrapped around the whole thing:
Spes. Fides. Amor.
Hope. Faith. Love.
Because sometimes the simplest things can carry the biggest ideas.
And this one?
We made it with LOVE.
Explore WishGarden Herbs
Curious about liquid herbal blends and botanical preparations? Explore the range of herbal formulations from WishGarden Herbs.
Affiliate disclosure: Boner’s Botanicals may earn a commission from qualifying purchases through this link, at no additional cost to you.
Affiliate disclosure: Boner’s Botanicals may earn a commission from qualifying purchases through this link, at no additional cost to you.
