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Pork Lard
The inside fat of the pig is melted for lard. To make it, cut the fat into thin slices, and put these into a jar. Place the jar in a pan of water, and keep this boiling until the fat dissolves. As it melts, pour it off into small jars or bladders properly prepared, the smaller the better, as the lard will not keep well after it has once been opened. Tie up securely, and store for use.
This is wet rendering, the gentlest method: the fat never touches direct heat, so it stays pale and neutral rather than taking on a roasted flavour. The instructions are sound; only the vessels and the storage need bringing up to date.
- "Inside fat" means leaf lardThe fat from around the pig's kidneys and loin, sold as leaf lard or flare fat. It renders whitest and mildest and is the grade wanted for pastry. Back fat and trimmings work but give a stronger, more porky result better suited to frying.
- The jar-in-a-pan is a double boilerAny heatproof bowl or a slow cooker set on low does the same job. Keep the water at a bare simmer; the point of the method is that the fat itself never exceeds about 100C, which is why it stays colourless and free of scorched flavour.
- Slice thin, or better, grindThe recipe's thin slices are the minimum. Cutting the fat small, or passing it through a mincer, gives it up faster. Wet rendering in a water bath is slow either way; expect it to take considerably longer than rendering directly in a pan.
- Strain before pottingThe original says only to pour it off. Pour it through a fine sieve lined with muslin instead: any stray meat, skin or moisture left in the lard is what turns it rancid. What remains in the sieve is the cracklings, though rendered this gently they stay pale rather than browning and crisping.
- Bladders and "properly prepared"Pig bladders were washed, soaked and blown up to dry, then filled and tied — an airtight container in a house with no refrigeration. Use small, dry, sterilised glass jars and seal while the lard is still warm but no longer steaming.
- Why small jars still mattersThe advice holds for the reason given: once opened, lard is exposed to air and light and begins to oxidise. Sealed, cool and dark, it keeps for months; refrigerated, a year. Refrigerate anything opened, and discard fat that smells sharp, waxy or like old paint.
- YieldRoughly 450 g of clean leaf fat gives about 400 ml of rendered lard, or a little under two cups. The loss is mostly water and connective tissue.
- Knowing when it is doneThe fat stops bubbling — that bubbling is water boiling off — and the remaining solids sink and turn golden. Take it off then; pushing further browns the lard and shortens its keeping.
Until vegetable shortening displaced it in the twentieth century, lard was one of the common household fats in Britain, northern Europe and America — competing regionally with butter, suet and dripping — and a book like Cassell's treats making it as basic knowledge rather than a recipe worth much explanation. The distinction the entry draws — the *inside* fat — is the important one: leaf lard from around the kidneys was graded and priced separately from back fat, and its near-flavourless, large-crystal texture is why lard-crust pastry has a reputation for flakiness that butter struggles to match. The mention of bladders dates the entry as much as anything in it; a scalded, dried pig's bladder was a free, airtight, effectively single-use container, and the same vessel was used for storing everything from snuff to artists' oil paints before the collapsible metal tube took over in the mid-1800s. The warning that lard will not keep once opened is a plain statement of pre-refrigeration life: the enemy is oxygen, and the only defence available was to divide the batch small enough that each portion was used up quickly.