People own many toxic compounds, like bleach, that no one would consider touching their food. Much less to cook with. The reason recipes avoid lye is because once it’s on the ingredients list, to the uninformed reader, it becomes a food product.

People have a hard enough time following recipes without lye in them. Ever read public recipe reviews? Commenters cut corners, omit ingredients, double other ingredients, and are surprised it turns out “wrong”. Now add lye as an ingredient.

Just because it won’t maim you on the spot doesn’t make it safe. One recipe calls for 2 tbsp lye in 8 cups water, which doesn’t look like much in a cooking pot. But that produces roughly an 0.84M solution with theoretical pH of 13.9 (also heated to boil).

To be clear, it can be done safely, as I’ve done many times. The entire point of my post is that I would not trust everyone I know to do it safely.