What is a Marseilles soap.

The genuine Marseille soap

Traditionally, it is has the shape of a cube and is made with two oils:

A green or brown cube is made with olive oil.

A white or light yellow cube is made with coco and palm oil.

Green or white, a genuine Marseille cube soap is fragrance-free and must contain a mandatory minimum of 72 % of oil. Since it must also be color dye-free, its color must change as it is aging.

A Marseille soap is 100 % biodegradable and do not melt like other soaps. Finally, it must have been handcrafted according to an old and hard-working process.

For the record

400 years ago, Marseille soaps were made only for household purposes and soap makers took the glycerin off the soaps (only one soap maker still do so). Nowadays, glycerin is left into the soap, making it more suitable for our personal toilet.

To this end and sole concession to modernity, Marseille soap craftsmen have developed scented Marseille soaps. This is not contradictory since they are simply raw Marseille soaps extra pure, whose fragrances are incorporated afterwards by using cold crushing technics.

To be accurate, scented Marseille soap should actually be called "scented soap with a Marseille soap base" or "Scented soap from Marseille".

But still...

Describing a genuine Marseille soap as we did is not enough. As we said earlier, it must also and above all, have been handcrafted according to the ancestral method of Marseille saponification.

This rigorous process involves not only a patient cooking in a cauldron, but also the imperative respect of a long manufacturing process. We strongly invite you to go to our Manufacturing page which describe this process. Here you will also find videos and photos taken in the soap factories that we do business with.

Unfortunately, the name "savon de Marseillle" is not a protected name and everybody can make a soap and called it Marseille soap, fooling consumers in the same time.

For the sake of transparency and consumer's confidence, for product quality and respect for tradition, traditional soap makers are trying to force a legislation so that only this strict manufacturing process can be officially associated with the name "Marseille soap". Because it is one of these products, beyond its primary function, that is a piece of heritage and know-how, handed down from century to century.

As you can see in a great document written during the 19 th century, a Marseille soap is definitely not a typical soap as it must deserve its name!