The following is a recipe for making soft soap with potash: To 20 pounds of clear grease or tallow take 17 pounds of pure white potash. Buy the potash in as fine lumps as it can be procured, and place it in the bottom of the soap barrel, which must be water-tight and strongly hooped. Boil the grease and pour it boiling hot upon the potash; then add two large pailfuls of boiling hot water; dissolve 1 pound of borax in 2 quarts of boiling hot water and stir all together thoroughly. Next morning add 2 pails of cold water and stir for half an hour; continue this process until a barrel containing thirty-six gallons is filled up. In a week or even less, it will be ready for use. The borax can be turned into grease while boiling, and also 1 pound of rosin. Soap made in this manner always comes, and is a first-rate article, and will last twice as long as that bought at a soap factory. The grease must be tried out, free from scraps, ham rinds, bones, or any other debris; then the soap will be as thick as jelly, and almost as clear. To make soft soap hard put into a kettle four pailfuls of soft soap, and stir in it by degrees about one quart of common salt. Boil until all the water is separated from the curd, remove the fire from the kettle and draw off the water with a siphon (a yard or so of rubber hose will answer); then pour the soap into a wooden form in which muslin has been placed. For this purpose a wooden box, sufficiently large and tight, may be employed. When the soap is firm turn out to dry, cut into bars with a brass wire and let it harden. A little powdered rosin will assist the soap to harden and give it a yellow color. If the soft soap is very thin, more salt should be added.
_Query.--O. C. L. writes: I am now in business again on my own hook, so please send me your book on Meat Curing and Sausage Making. I will, in the near future, equip my market with an up-to-date sausage factory. I have the following machinery: 1 six-horse power gasoline engine, silent cutter, Enterprise machine, 1 bone cutter, 1 steam boiler for rendering lard, cooking sausage, etc. The room I intend to place this machinery in is 15×25 feet; would like to hear some of your suggestions, and plans in placing the machinery; would appreciate this very much. Has the freezing of pork sausage any detrimental effect on the flavor of the sausage? Accept my well wishes._