MILKY WAY

MILKY WAY soap takes its name seriously: goat's milk is at work in the recipe. With it comes a citrus-woody scent from pure essential oils — bergamot, lemongrass and ho wood — and a creamy lather courtesy of coconut oil with shea butter. A smooth, honey-coloured bar: a soap handmade by the cold process for hands and the whole body.

What does goat's milk do in soap?

Goat's milk is one of the oldest soapmaking ingredients — in our workshop it goes straight into the soap mass during cold-process production, and its own fats join the recipe during saponification just like the oils. It is an ingredient of animal origin, and we say so plainly: this soap is not one of the vegan ones.

The scent opens with bergamot, lemongrass holds it in fresh citrus, and ho wood — an essential oil from the wood of the camphor tree, rich in linalool — rounds the whole composition off softly. No fragrance blends. And like every natural scent, this one carries the natural allergens of essential oils; we declare them on the label, and why there is no need to fear them is explained in our article on allergens in cosmetics.

The rest of the recipe is an honest classic: coconut oil gives the lather volume and the soap hardness, shea butter leaves skin supple, olive oil adds a gentler character and sunflower oil rounds out the fatty-acid profile. The soap is created by saponification — the oils and milk react with a sodium hydroxide solution, and the result is a soap mass with naturally formed glycerine, which binds water and which we leave in the mass. How all that chemistry works is set out, with no scaremongering, in our article on what saponification is. We wire-cut it and leave the bars to cure on the shelf for at least 30 days. In Prievidza, palm-oil-free.

Between washes, let it dry out on a soap dish that lets water drain away — it will stay firm and whole for much longer. In its paper box it will also delight as a gift with a story right there in the name.