WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 55: The Hygiene Revolution (3)

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Gushhh-

Dark, murky lye poured over violently boiling lard.

At once, a fierce chemical reaction erupted inside the cauldron. Grease splattered everywhere, white steam billowed up, and a harsh stench filled the room.

"Ugh..."

Josef covered his nose and backed away. Šárka squeezed her eyes shut, covering her nose and mouth with her apron.

Only János Hunyadi stood his ground, his brow deeply furrowed as he silently gripped the stirring paddle.

"You told me to stir it, right?"

"Yes. Keep stirring without stopping, until the water and oil combine into a thick mixture."

"Ha... You're truly gifted at working people to the bone, my lord."

János Hunyadi grumbled but began stirring. A bitter stench rose from the cauldron.

Saponification.

It was the process in which the fatty acids in oil combined with the alkali in lye, becoming glycerin and soap.

The process was unbearably tedious.

Without a modern mixer, the only source of power here was human arm strength.

While János Hunyadi sweated through his labor, I wasn't standing around idle either. I immediately went to the small cauldron prepared beside us.

I pulled out the burning firewood and left only glowing red coals behind. Gentle heat began to warm the cauldron.

I dropped in a lump of purified, snow-white lard.

At such a low temperature that it didn't even sizzle, the lard slowly melted into a clear liquid.

Next, I began peeling the apple skins in the basket one by one.

"Your Majesty, are you really going to put those in?"

Josef, who had been watching, could no longer hold back.

"I must say this again. If you mix organic matter into soap, it will rot. Besides, even if you boil apple skins in lard, all you'll get is a foul smell of burnt sugar."

"That only applies if you boil it hard."

I brushed aside Josef's concerns and carefully poured the apple skins into the oil.

Plop, plop-

The red skins sank into the clear oil.

I held my palm near the cauldron to judge its temperature.

Warm, but not hot.

About as warm as pleasantly heated bathwater.

At this temperature, the apple's cell walls wouldn't break down. Instead, only the natural essential oils and waxes hidden in the skins would slowly seep into the oil.

This was maceration, a warm infusion method.

It was the foundation of perfume-making and the most elegant technique for capturing scents vulnerable to heat.

As time passed, the once-clear oil began to take on a faint reddish hue.

Then, amid the caustic scent of lye filling the workshop, a crisp, refreshing fragrance began to bloom.

Šárka sniffed the air.

"Huh...? It smells like apples! It really smells like apples!"

Josef's eyes widened as well.

Although the oil was being heated, there was no smell of frying or burning. Only the fresh scent unique to raw fruit lingered in the air.

"H-How... can lard possibly smell like this?"

"I told you. I wasn't boiling it."

Nodding in satisfaction, I strained the apple-scented oil through a sieve and removed the skins.

Now I had lard that smelled of apples.

At that moment, János Hunyadi called out, panting heavily.

"My lord! My arms won't move anymore! Isn't this enough?"

When I turned around, the contents of János Hunyadi's cauldron had become as thick as paste.

When he lifted the paddle, a clear trail remained in the mixture.

It was the sign that saponification was complete.

"Good. You did well."

I had János Hunyadi step back, then immediately picked up a sack of salt.

Josef swallowed hard, looking tense again.

To him, I must have looked like a madman about to throw ashes into finished soap.

Without hesitation, I poured the salt into the cauldron.

Shhhhhh-

White salt crystals cascaded over the thick soap mixture.

Gripping the paddle, I stirred the cauldron with all my strength.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

At first, nothing seemed to change.

Just as Josef was about to let out either a scoff or a sigh of relief.

Gurgle, plop-

A strange sound came from inside the cauldron.

Like cheese curdling when vinegar is added to milk, the evenly mixed paste suddenly began to clump together.

"Gasp! W-What is this...! Your Majesty, what kind of magic are you using?"

"Magic? No, this is chemistry."

Salting-out.

It was a basic separation process that used differences in solubility to force out only the desired substance.

Once the sodium ions in the salt took control of the water, the soap molecules had nowhere to go. Seeking a way to survive, they gathered together and fled upward.

The contents of the cauldron were now perfectly divided into two layers.

On top sat pure, snow-white soap curds.

Below was nothing but a dark red, cloudy liquid.

It contained the excess lye that lowered the soap's quality, foul impurities, and glycerin residue that made soap soft.

I scooped out the white clumps with a ladle.

"Do you see it, Josef? This is soap made from the lard you looked down on so much."

The white masses floating atop the cauldron were so pale and clean that it was hard to believe they had been made from lard.

"Th-This can't be..."

As if entranced, Josef stepped toward the cauldron. With a trembling hand, he gently pressed one of the soap clumps.

It was hard.

Normally, soap made by mixing lye and oil became soft soap.

It was easily crushed under pressure and quickly dissolved in water, so commoners had to keep it in small jars and use it sparingly.

But soap that had met salt was different. It had become a solid as hard as stone.

And in this era, white, hard soap meant Castile soap, a symbol of wealth and power.

That precious item had been born from nothing more than common lye and lard.

While Josef caressed the soap in a daze, I adjusted my leather gloves and spoke.

"It's too soon to be surprised. The real part starts now."

Even if I removed and hardened the soap in this state, its cleansing power would be excellent.

But this curd soap had been stripped of nearly all its oil and moisture, so it would feel terribly harsh against the skin. It was little different from modern laundry soap.

That was why I needed the apple oil I had prepared earlier.

I scooped up the hot soap mixture and moved it onto the workbench.

Then I generously poured the fragrant oil infused with apple skins over the steaming white mass and began kneading the hot mixture with my gloved hands.

Thump, thump-

I kneaded and crushed the soap mixture as if making bread.

The wet squelching sound gradually turned into a firm, elastic one.

Since the saponification reaction had already ended, the components of the apple oil wouldn't be destroyed when mixed into the paste.

The oil seeped between the soap molecules and formed a moisturizing barrier, while the apple fragrance trapped by the heat became richer and fuller.

Rebatching and superfatting.

They were modern processes that neutralized the harshness of strong alkali and gave soap the wings of moisture and fragrance.

The soap mixture, which had been only white, absorbed the apple oil and turned a soft ivory color, taking on a luxurious sheen.

It was soft like clay now, but once it cooled, it would become a smooth jewel as hard as marble.

I filled wooden molds with the steaming soap mixture and finished the work.

"There. It's done."

At my words, Josef approached the molds as though possessed. He placed his nose close to the soap and took a deep breath.

Sniff, sniff-

"It truly... smells like apples."

Josef's voice trembled faintly.

"It isn't an overwhelming fragrance like expensive musk or ambergris. But..."

His expression showed that this was precisely why it shocked him even more.

It wasn't an artificial scent made by pouring in costly fragrances, but the freshness of nature itself.

And its base ingredient was the pork fat he had despised so deeply.

After waiting for the soap in the molds to cool somewhat, I used a wooden knife to cut it into suitable pieces.

Rectangular bars of soap.

They were still warm and soft but would become hard as stone once cooled.

I selected the most nicely shaped pieces.

Then I abruptly held them out to the dazed Šárka.

"Take these."

"Y-Yes...?"

I forcefully stuffed the soap bars into the pocket of her apron.

"They're for testing. Use them yourself and report on everything, whether they lather well and whether they make your skin feel tight. Give any leftovers to the other maids or use them all yourself. It's up to you."

"Y-Your Majesty! How could I possibly accept something so precious...!"

Šárka clutched her apron, utterly flustered.

"Only noble ladies use things like this. How could someone like me dare..."

"What's so precious about it?"

I gave a quiet laugh and pointed to the materials scattered across the workbench.

"You saw it with your own eyes. All it took was common pork fat, ash scraped from the hearth, and leftover apple skins."

"B-But..."

"Don't feel burdened. The material cost is hardly any different from the soap you use every day."

With tears in her eyes, Šárka carefully held the soap against her chest.

As she breathed in its apple fragrance, she wore an ecstatic expression, as if she possessed the whole world.

"Thank you... Thank you so much, Your Majesty..."

I gave Šárka a few instructions.

"You can use it right away, but if you want the best quality, dry it in the shade for about a week. The moisture inside has to fully evaporate for the structure to set firmly."

Hugging the soap, Šárka bowed over and over.

"Yes! I will remember! I'll treat it as more precious than my own life!"

"No, you don't need to go that far..."

That was when János Hunyadi, who had silently watched everything, cautiously spoke.

"My lord, wait a moment. I too admire your skill in alchemy... no, chemistry."

"Hm?"

"Lard, lye, and apples are cheap, so I understand that. But isn't salt a different matter?"

János Hunyadi nodded toward the empty salt sack in the corner of the workbench.

"Salt is so expensive that people call it white gold. Bohemia has neither a sea nor rock salt mines, so it imports all of it from Poland. The amount you poured into that cauldron earlier must have been worth several silver coins..."

János Hunyadi frowned.

"Isn't that like sprinkling gold dust to make one cauldron of soap? And you plan to sell this to commoners at a low price. The salt could cost more than the soap itself. It will bankrupt the royal treasury."

János Hunyadi's concern was reasonable.

Salt was expensive. In landlocked Bohemia, it was a necessity for survival and a costly strategic resource.

If we poured in and threw away valuable salt every time we made soap, this business would be little different from an economic disaster.

But János Hunyadi said that only because he didn't understand chemistry.

"János Hunyadi. Do you think salt disappears when it dissolves in water, like sugar?"

"Well... when you put it in water, it disappears, doesn't it? Like when you add salt to soup. Only the salty taste remains, while the salt is gone."

"Not being visible and disappearing are different things."

I pointed to the dark red liquid left behind in the cauldron after the soap had been removed, the wastewater.

"The salt I added earlier is still completely inside this. Not a single grain has disappeared."

"What?"

"Salt doesn't take part in the saponification reaction. It merely dissolves in the water and pushes out the soap. It remains in the water."

I scooped up a ladleful of the dark wastewater and showed it to him.

"What do you think will happen if we boil this water again and evaporate the moisture? The water will become steam and fly into the sky, but salt doesn't have wings. In the end, it will return as white crystals at the bottom."

János Hunyadi's mouth fell open.

"T-Then..."

"Yes. It means we can recycle it indefinitely. There is only an initial investment. After that, salt will cost us almost nothing, apart from the small amount lost during processing."

János Hunyadi muttered blankly.

"Heh, infinite salt... That's the strangest thing I've heard in days. It's even more absurd than alchemists claiming they can turn lead into gold."

The fact that precious salt, thought to be a consumable, could be permanently recycled.

The economic impact seemed to have greatly shocked János Hunyadi, whose mind was quick with calculations.

And someone else couldn't bear that shock either.

Thud.

It was Josef.

As though his legs had given out, he fell to his knees on the floor.

His eyes moved back and forth between the dark wastewater at the bottom of the cauldron and the ivory soap held in Šárka's arms.

"Your Majesty."

"Hm?"

"I... I was wrong."

His voice trembled faintly.

"For the past thirty years... I waited for soap to harden while staring endlessly at the sky. When it rained, I worried that humidity would ruin it. When there was no wind, I fretted that it would spoil inside... I believed those tedious years were a natural part of the process, that they were the devotion of a craftsman."

Josef covered his face with his rough hands. Deep wrinkles folded between his fingers.

"But in only half a day... Your Majesty surpassed the level I spent my entire life trying to reach. And you did it with the lowliest of materials."

His shoulders shook with sobs.

It was the despair of feeling as though his entire life had been denied.

The thirty years he had endured with pride in being the finest craftsman had crumbled like a sandcastle before the truth of chemistry.

"The soap I made until now... was nothing but expensive garbage. I am no craftsman. I was only an ignorant old man trapped by my own stubbornness."

There was no trace left of the arrogant master of the Prague Soap Guild.

Only a shabby old man remained, hanging his head in shame at his own ignorance.

Without a word, I walked over to Josef.

Then I placed a hand on the kneeling craftsman's shoulder.

"You weren't wrong, Josef."

"Y-Your Majesty...?"

"You simply didn't know. You had no choice but to wait because you did not understand the laws of nature or the principles of handling materials. And ignorance is not a sin."

I gripped him firmly and pulled him to his feet.

"The time you spent looking to the sky and waiting, that persistence, is what made you Prague's finest craftsman. I value that persistence highly."

"Your Majesty..."

Josef looked up at me with tear-streaked eyes.

"Josef. You are the guildmaster of the Prague Soap Guild. I need your soap workshop's equipment, workers, and seasoned experience."

"You... need me? Someone as ignorant as I am?"

"Yes. I will establish the theory. But you and the guild will be the ones to put it into practice."

I pointed to the soap Šárka held.

"Cover Prague, no, all of Bohemia with this soap. Forget the high-minded Castile soap used by nobles. From now on, we will make this apple soap by the brickload and flood the market with it."

Josef straightened his clothes.

He wiped his wet eyes with his sleeve, then bowed deeper and more respectfully than ever before.

It was no longer the greeting of a stubborn old craftsman, but a vow of loyalty offered as the technician of a great sovereign.

"I... I accept your command! Even if I must devote the rest of my life to it, I will make Your Majesty's fragrance cover all of Bohemia!"

Footnotes:

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