Lisa Curry Coffee, age 7, of Milwaukee, Wisc., for her question;

Could I make soap?

If you help mother in the kitchen, you may have made soap without knowing it. It happens when you use washing soda to clean out a greasy iron pan. Put a few lumps of the soda in with the fat and grease in the pan. Now add a little water and put it on the stove. As the water boils, the fat and soda will mix together to form soap. It is a scummy kind of soap and full of bits of burnt cooking. You would not take it into the bathtub or use it to wash your hands. But it does a good job of cleaning out the dirty cooking pan.

Chances are, your great‑grandmother made the soap for the whole family. In olden days, only fine fancy soaps were sold in the stores. A housewife set aside a day now and then for soap making. She made it from much the same ingredients which made the soap in the pan. Of course, the fats and grease she used were pure and clean. And she used a variation in place of the washing soda.

All the waste kitchen fat and grease were put aside and saved for soap making day. Wood ashes were also saved, for they provided the second soda‑like ingredient. The ashes were soaked and rinsed in water. This made them give up a substance called potash which mixes with fat very much as washing soda does.

The fat and the water with its dissolved potash were then put into a big pot. The job was usually done outdoors. A fire was lighted under the pot of grease and potash. When the mixture boiled, it turned into a soft, yellowish soap.

This soap was fine for laundry and for household chores. But a supply of hand soap was made for face and hands. This kind of soap needed another ingredient. Salty brine was added to the mixture. This caused a thick scum to rise to the top of the brew. When this scum cooled it was hard, fine soap, all ready to be cut into cakes and bars. Sometimes a little perfume was added to the hard complexion soap to make it more glamorous.

If she had to, your mother still could make soap as the pioneer women made it. And you would help make it, just as the pioneer daughters helped their mothers. Tile whole job was too big for a seven year old girl to do all by herself. But she would be learning the; tricks of soap‑making from her mother. She would learn by helping how much potash was needed to turn so much fat into soap. For the ingredients must balance each other. Too much fat, and the soap will not lather. Too much potash, and it burns the skin.