I have openly expressed my dislike for veggie based soaps on this forum based on the many veggie based soaps I've tried. However, last month I was introduced to Provence Sante Green Tea soap and was totally impressed. It was the only veggie based soap that I've tried that gave me tallow like lather and slickness. Based on that experience, I figured I would try another french soap and have been reading good stuff about L'Occitane Cade. Well, this morning I tried Cade for the first time and guess what?......nice cushiony, slick lather that gave me BBS shave with no skips, cuts, or irritation. Both soaps performed wonderfully and smelled great! I would rate PSGT soap 1 point higher than Cade due to it's slightly thicker lather but give both soaps high scores. The British veggie based soaps I've tried so far do not come close to emulating a tallow like lather and shave, but these soaps do. I've even tried Trumper's reformulated soap which gets good reviews here but it was the worst soap I have used to date. It was probably early reformulation. However, these French shaving soaps are making me re-think my position on veggie based soaps. I'm still a tallow freak but it's nice to see other quality alternative options. What do you guys feel about these soaps?
Another winner from France!
- Thread starter AJ72
- Start date
Glad to hear that you have found another option. As long as it lathers good and smells good I am good. Of course, I still have my favs. <grin> I tend to like tallow better though.
Yeah, I think too many people get caught up in the "if there's no tallow it isn't worth using" state of mind. If a soap was made out of old tires but yielded a great shave and smelled could, I could care less what it was made out of 
Tony, welcome to the reality of great veg soaps. And no, I am not being facetious or a smartaleck. I too love the great tallow soaps like AOS and Harris. Yet a long time ago I started trying Franco soaps after reading our own Lathermeister's excellent postings on the subject. I quickly discovered that soap chemistry is much more important than raw materials per se. If the producer knows what they are doing, then fantastic shave soaps can be made from vegetable base. In other words, enjoy your soaps!
Regards, Todd
I like to keep my options open too, but I'm afraid that Arko might have me hooked on tallow!
The Shea butter based soaps like PS and IK are really good performers in my hands. Great slick lather, great scents, and a really well-moisturized face when I'm done.
provence sante is an underrated gem. i'm sure the tallow patrol will hunt me down for saying this, but it works just as well as my arlington or AOS and costs less than either.
Reverse the two lines above, and you have my answer. Cade didn't work as well as I would've hoped, but PS and PdP perform to full satisfaction. I have yet to try IK and Lothantique, but I will order those only once I know when I'll be in France again.
Privately, I wonder if there is a connection between well-performing vegetal soaps and the fact that they contain shea butter. Cade doesn't have shea, PS and PdP do. (IK and Lothantique too, by the way.) Shea butter contains a great deal of stearic acid, which is the one thing missing to some extent from a mixture of palm and palm kernel oil. Stearic acid gives a lather its 'heaviness', and that might make all the difference. There will always be differences to tallow soaps, of course, but the resulting mixtures leave very, very little to be desired.
- Thread starter
- #9
Don't get me wrong. I still prefer a high quality tallow based soap, but until now have only experienced less than satisfying results. Provence Sante gets my nod for the best non tallow soap I have tried to date. I enjoy it as much as my favorite tallow based soaps. Cade is nice too, but PGST is a real winner.
- Thread starter
- #10
I thought stearic acid was made from tallow? Am I wrong? If this is true and shea butter is a natural butter, then how can shea butter contain stearic acid?
Well we are all different in our likes and dislikes and I have enjoyed Cade with its cold cream, but I think you must have had an early reformulation
of Trumpers soap and I agree the first reformulation efforts were poor soaps. The last three I have used have been exceptional and I am presently enjoying their Limes soap which I think has a realistic scent and gives a richness of lather that is hard to better for the price. Floris beats it at nearly twice the price, but with my water, cade which has a similar price is quite a thin soap by comparison. Clearly with your water, Cade works for you and that's great.
Stearic acid is not actually made from tallow, rather it is extracted from it. It is one of tallow's constituents (tallow being a mixture of various such acids), although not a prominent one. Just like tallow, shea nuts contain a mixture of various fatty acids, amongst which stearic acid where contrariwise it is a prominent, if not the major constituent. Technically it would be no problem at all to extract it from the shea, but because tallow is a lot cheaper I doubt if such a process exists anywhere.
You can also isolate it from some vegetable fats and oil like shea and cocoa butter too, both of which have a fairly high percentage of stearic acid, but like you said it's cheaper to obtain from animal fat.
I don´t either PSGT but L'Occitane is and amazing soap.
I find that Cade takes a little more work then my tallow based soap but it is a very nice soap, I don't get a super close shave with it but the smell is wonderful. I have a few more French soaps that I like quite a bit. Lothantique is nice but it takes a lot of work for me to get a quality lather from it. I also have PdP but I have not used it in a over a year, I have been meaning to get it out and see how compares to my current favorite soaps. I also have a shave stick of IK that I received right before the holidays that I need to try.
I totally agree with you. I have not tried Provence Sante soaps yet but Cade is excellent. It is almost as good as a tallow soap and the scent is outstanding. I also agree regarding the English non-tallow soaps I have tried--not good--especially Trumpers. I LOVE their creams but their soaps...not so much! I have the Rose and Coconut and dislike them both. I plan to eventually sell or trade them. I wish I had been able to try the old Trumper's tallow based soaps....
Oh, and in regards to Cade, I HATE the shaving cream! I know some people like it, but to me, it does not smell anything like the soap or their A/S. Has anyone else noticed this? To me, its weird--the scent is not even close. Nor does it lather as well or shave as good as the soap.
Shaving Dad you hit upon something I have experienced as well. The Trumper shave soaps are not that great. Okay, wait for it........ducking, ducking. Honestly, it just does not perform that well for me. I have what is supposedly the vaunted tallow version, almond scented, that lists its ingredients as "shave soap base, toilet soap base, fragrance, EDTA, titanium dioxide, colours: CI No. 11680(2% solution) CI No. 12490(2% solution)". I am still unimpressed. It is funny since most veg soaps get bagged on pretty hard at times yet Trumper gets a complete pass. I have seen it said their initial veg version was bad and then reformulated again and is now good. I don't have any idea but I can tell you my version is average at best. Now that doesn't mean with someone else's waer supply it might not perform a lot better but it is allegedly the tallow/old version that was supposed to be excellent. I would trade it in a heartbeat for one of the more obscure Franco or Italian soaps. Anyway, give the Provence Sante of either scent a try. You will probably like it a lot.
Regards, Todd
Regards, Todd
You are right in that I should try a Trumper soap in the interest of fairness; all I'm going on are reports from others I know to have been shaving since I was in diapers. Anyone have a tablet of Trumper's Coconut they are no longer using (state is unimportant, though, of course, not a thin wafer 
) and willing to send to me?
) and willing to send to me?
