Tallow and cream
- Thread starter JeffM
- Start date
Soap is a mixture of fatty acids: molecules with a long, flexible carbon chain 'tail' (comprising between 12 and 20 carbon atoms) and a charged 'knob' made of a structure which is acidic in nature. Think vinegar here; it uses the exact same 'knob'. Nature produces mixtures of such fatty acids. There are vegetable sources like coconut oil having shorter chains, palm oil having mid to longer chains, and shea butter having almost all longer chains; there are also animalistic sources such as tallow (cleaned and purified beef fat) resembling palm oil, but containing a somewhat larger content of longer chains.
In theory one can make any natural mixture by mixing the constituents together in the right proportions.
By altering the composition of the mixture of fats you can alter the properties of a soap or cream. Longer chains make the lather richer and heavier, shorter chains make it more bubbly. Unfortunately longer chains are harder to dissolve too, so most products rely on mixtures to compromise on both aspects.
Tallow is a mixture of fatty acids which in shaving terms does a lot of things right off the bat, so it is not difficult to put together a product which performs well. However there is a tendency to move away from tallow, mostly for reasons of marketing. Stating that a soap did not rely on animal products sells better to the right crowds—that instead rain forests were flattened to turn them into poorly managed palm oil plantations, destroying habitats of other animals by the score, is a story most marketeers don't tell. It is harder to make a good soap based on vegetable oils, but it can be done. Unfortunately, most manufacturers simply don't bother to perfect the product or have no idea what it takes to make it good, and thus the shaver is presented with sub-standard products which are justly shunned and ridiculed. Recent sad examples are the Erasmic shave stick (which completely screwed up the formulation to the point where a chemist could simply read from the label that the performance would be abysmal) and a little further back, the very expensive Floris and Penhaligon's soaps. Erasmic has since reverted to its old formulation, I believe; how the other two currently perform I do not know. An interesting experiment is being conducted by the already vegetable-based Provence Santé: this is/used to be an excellent product, but unfortunately not deemed sufficiently 'natural' by the producer. It is anyone's guess how they will alter the formula to bring it more in line with what the company considers its values.
With creams, the tendency exists to use specific fatty acids which have been extracted from whatever source was cheapest; with soaps the oils and fats are used 'whole'. Therefore you will not see many 'tallow creams', although the source of the fatty acids (in many cases stearic acid and myristic acid) could indeed be tallow. (However, the specific combination of acids which make tallow tallow is then of course no longer present.) If you use a cream which specifically mentions which fatty acids were used, then you needn't worry about a manufacturer switching from tallow to, say, palm oil and vice versa: stearic acid and myristic acid are always the same, be it extracted from a plant or from an animal. If it mentions tallow (rather some 'tallowate') as an ingredient then performance can indeed be altered. Whether for good or for bad remains to be seen. Shaving creams very often contain 'coconut acid' as well: this is saponified coconut oil, so the 'whole oil', not purified according to its separate constituents. Being a natural product some variation can be expected, and thus in the shaving cream as well. However, coconut oil is such a staple, and so accepted, that it would make no sense at all to consider a reformulation without it.
In theory one can make any natural mixture by mixing the constituents together in the right proportions.
By altering the composition of the mixture of fats you can alter the properties of a soap or cream. Longer chains make the lather richer and heavier, shorter chains make it more bubbly. Unfortunately longer chains are harder to dissolve too, so most products rely on mixtures to compromise on both aspects.
Tallow is a mixture of fatty acids which in shaving terms does a lot of things right off the bat, so it is not difficult to put together a product which performs well. However there is a tendency to move away from tallow, mostly for reasons of marketing. Stating that a soap did not rely on animal products sells better to the right crowds—that instead rain forests were flattened to turn them into poorly managed palm oil plantations, destroying habitats of other animals by the score, is a story most marketeers don't tell. It is harder to make a good soap based on vegetable oils, but it can be done. Unfortunately, most manufacturers simply don't bother to perfect the product or have no idea what it takes to make it good, and thus the shaver is presented with sub-standard products which are justly shunned and ridiculed. Recent sad examples are the Erasmic shave stick (which completely screwed up the formulation to the point where a chemist could simply read from the label that the performance would be abysmal) and a little further back, the very expensive Floris and Penhaligon's soaps. Erasmic has since reverted to its old formulation, I believe; how the other two currently perform I do not know. An interesting experiment is being conducted by the already vegetable-based Provence Santé: this is/used to be an excellent product, but unfortunately not deemed sufficiently 'natural' by the producer. It is anyone's guess how they will alter the formula to bring it more in line with what the company considers its values.
With creams, the tendency exists to use specific fatty acids which have been extracted from whatever source was cheapest; with soaps the oils and fats are used 'whole'. Therefore you will not see many 'tallow creams', although the source of the fatty acids (in many cases stearic acid and myristic acid) could indeed be tallow. (However, the specific combination of acids which make tallow tallow is then of course no longer present.) If you use a cream which specifically mentions which fatty acids were used, then you needn't worry about a manufacturer switching from tallow to, say, palm oil and vice versa: stearic acid and myristic acid are always the same, be it extracted from a plant or from an animal. If it mentions tallow (rather some 'tallowate') as an ingredient then performance can indeed be altered. Whether for good or for bad remains to be seen. Shaving creams very often contain 'coconut acid' as well: this is saponified coconut oil, so the 'whole oil', not purified according to its separate constituents. Being a natural product some variation can be expected, and thus in the shaving cream as well. However, coconut oil is such a staple, and so accepted, that it would make no sense at all to consider a reformulation without it.
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buh? 
That's quite an explanation.
I never really knew why they put what they did in soaps and creams.
Thanks.
That's quite an explanation.
I never really knew why they put what they did in soaps and creams.
Thanks.
Excellent explanation. That's great stuff!
That's quite an explanation. Great post, cymric.
