From David Fisher,
Your Guide to Candle & Soap Making.
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Think "harder oils" and you'll generally get whiter soap. Generally, that is, because most of the "harder" oils will give you a whiter soap as well.

• Beef Tallow
• Lard
• Coconut
• Palm Kernel

will all give you nice hard white soap.
A little bit of Castor in the recipe will also help give you a nice hard white bar, as will really light-colored Olive Oil. (Note: usually only the "refined grade A" is light enough color to not impart any of the green to the soap.)

So, here are a few simple recipes using these oils that should give you a nice hard white bar of soap with or without the Titanium Dioxide. (Note: Yes, these all use Beef Tallow. You can order it commercially from soapmaking oil suppliers like Columbus Foods, or it's really easy to render tallow for soap making yourself.)

Basic White Soap

• 35% Beef Tallow
• 30% Coconut
• 30% Lard
• 5% Castor Oil

Basic White Soap with Shea
A little refined shea butter (Buy Direct) will give you some extra moisturizing without imparting much color at all.

• 30% Beef Tallow
• 30% Coconut
• 30% Lard
• 5% Shea Butter
• 5% Castor

Basic White Soap with Olive
If you've got some really light-colored refined Olive Oil, you can try that too. It's often worth the slight beige tint to get the extra moisturizing qualities of Olive.

• 25% Beef Tallow
• 25% Lard
• 25% Coconut
• 20% Olive
• 5% Castor

So for a nice, hard, white bar of soap, just like Granny used to make, use one of these combinations of oils, or create your own soap recipe using combinations of these oils. If you want to use your tried and true recipe, but want it whiter, add some Titanium Dioxide to the batch. Or...better yet...use one of these recipes AND add some TD and folks might just think you've slipped a bar of Ivory (Which is really not very Ivory colored, is it?) into the bath! (Heaven Forbid!)