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Fat, to Clarify
Save all scraps of fat, cooked and uncooked. Put them into a saucepan with a little water, and boil till the fat is all melted. Strain through a sieve into a basin, and pour over it a little boiling water. All the impurities will sink to the bottom, and the fat will cake on the top as it cools.
A wet-rendering method: water keeps the fat below scorching point while the solids give up their grease. It works exactly as described, with two provisos about finishing and storage.
- The hinge: drive off the waterFat clarified this way still holds moisture, and moisture is what turns dripping rancid or mouldy. Once the cake has set and you have scraped the jelly and sediment from its underside, melt it again gently on its own and hold it at a bare simmer until it stops sputtering and goes clear and quiet. Then it will keep.
- Heat and vesselLow heat throughout, a heavy pan, and no lid clamped down. The water should barely simmer; if it boils away the fat browns and the whole batch tastes of scorch.
- Cooked and uncooked scrapsThe book lumps them together, which is fine for dripping meant for frying and pastry, but cooked trimmings carry salt, browning and pan flavours. Render raw suet or leaf fat separately if you want a neutral fat for sweet pastry.
- StrainingA sieve alone leaves fine sediment behind. Line it with muslin or a coffee filter and the fat comes through clear, which materially improves keeping time.
- Poured boiling waterThis is a washing step, not merely a settling one. It dissolves salt and soluble scraps and carries them to the bottom of the basin; the fat sets in a clean disc above them and lifts off in one piece.
- StorageA larder was cool but nothing like a refrigerator, and temperatures varied with season and siting. Refrigerate the finished fat in a covered jar and use it within a few months, or freeze it. Any sour or paint-like smell means it has oxidised and should go.
- Yield and useYield varies widely with the scraps: clean raw leaf fat gives up most of its weight, mixed cooked trimmings a good deal less. Beef and mutton fat suit roasting potatoes and frying; pork fat is the one for pastry.
Clarifying fat was not thrift for its own sake but a fixed part of the kitchen economy in houses that bought meat on the bone and butchered at home. Purchased cooking fat was expensive and, before industrial refining and the spread of vegetable shortenings, dripping was widely used as a frying and pastry fat in British households; the dripping jar sat on the shelf and was topped up after every roast. The same wet-rendering and water-washing sequence appears in kitchen manuals well before and long after this one, and is essentially the method still used for clarifying tallow and lard.