In the wash

French-born Shanghai resident Eric Saldinger first became fascinated by soap, particularly products made in Marseille, as a young man. And last Saturday he gave a lecture on the subject at the Alliance Française de Shanghai (AFS) in Hongkou district.

It's a topic he has researched for some time and he told the Global Times that most people give little thought to where their daily bar of soap comes from. "Soap is easy to take for granted, but few people know that soap is the beginning of all bath products and cosmetics, and this is worthy of careful study," Saldinger said.

Countryside ingredients

Containing only pure olive and palm oils with fragrances found nowhere except in the countryside of southern France, Saldinger said that soaps made in France are among the finest in the world.

"However, the earliest soap in France had a very ugly, brownish black color and smelt very bad. And it was mainly used for washing clothes or for tinting hair red." Saldinger said that since the time of the ancient Gauls, French people have made soap by using animal oils, such as the oils of bulls and wild boar, adding a little plant oil in.

"People would dig a hole in the ground, burn some leaves inside it, and then pour in the wild boar oil and mix the two together. The ancient Gauls always grew their hair long which they hid in a tall hat, and this was probably because the hair tinted by the soap had an unpleasant smell. It was obtained by blending the ashes of beech wood and goat suet. It was said to possess certain medicinal qualities," he added.

The appearance of Marseille soap came about because of its unique geographical position. It is a French port city on the Mediterranean and the original archetype of Marseille soap travelled there from another Mediterranean city, Aleppo which is Syria's second largest city.

"Aleppo has always been one of the most important soap-making cities in the world with more than 4,000 years' history of creating soap. This is mainly because of its rich sources of olive oil and laurel oil. And in the 14th century, Aleppo's method of mainly using plant oil - especially olive oil - to make soap made its way to Marseille," said Saldinger.

After that, many small soap-making workshops appeared in Marseille with local people using the ample supplies of olive oil that were available in the nearby countryside.

Saldinger told us that at the beginning of the 17th century, the annual production of soap in Marseille reached more than 20,000 tons, barely sufficient to satisfy demand from the city and the surrounding region.

"And it was in 1688 that Louis XIV set the standard prescription for soaps made in Marseille by imperial order and named it 'Savon de Marseille.' This only applied to soap that used olive oil and other plant oils, and absolutely prohibited the use of animal oil," said Saldinger.