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Vinegar, Pickles, and Pickling: Lard
TRYING OUT AND STORING LARD Lard. The leaf fat which adheres to the ribs and belly of the hog make the so-called "leaf lard," which is of the best quality. Hence it is a good plan to try out the leaves separately.
But any part of the hog fat not used for other purposes may be tried out to make an ordinary quality of lard.
A set kettle, or other large kettle, held over a camp fire by means of a tripod out of doors on a clear, calm day, is the best utensil for this purpose. Cut the fat into small pieces 1 or 2 inches square, and add 1 ounce of soda for each 25 pounds of meat. Stir frequently as soon as the fat melts and the scraps begin to brown. Melt with very gentle heat, taking care not to allow the fat to smoke or burn. Toward the last, the lard must be stirred constantly to prevent burning. The lard will be done when the steam ceases to rise.
When the scraps are brown and shriveled, throw in a little salt to settle the sediment, and strain through a cheese-cloth strainer into tubs or jars. Tie over the tops a layer of cotton batting to exclude the air. Lard will keep better in small jars than in large ones. Good lard should be white and solid without any offensive odor. Store in a cool, dry place.
The lard from the intestines will not keep as well as leaf lard, hence should be rendered separately. It will keep better if soaked for 3 or 4 days in strong brine changed each day.
Bleaching Lard. The addition of about 1 pint of boiled white lye from hickory ashes, strained through cheese cloth into the fat before boiling, tends to bleach it.
Adulteration of Lard with Water. -The addition of 3 to 5 per cent milk of lime, allows about 25 per cent of water to be mixed with lard while cooling, thus greatly increasing its weight and volume. The presence of water may be perceived by the sputtering made in melting the lard. Also, the water will collect in the bottom of the vessel and the lard will float on its surface. This test will often show that the purchaser is paying for a considerable percentage of water instead of lard.
Cod Fat.-The suet taken from the beef flank is called cod fat. It makes a much softer and better fat than the common suet. Obtain the best looking pieces of cod fat from the butcher, free them from veins or spots and melt with very gentle heat.
Pour the melted suet into clear cold water, iced water, if convenient, to harden. Pour off the water, remove all dampness with a clean dry cloth.
Wrap up the fat in waxed paper and store in a cool, dry place.
PRESERVATION OF MEAT AND VEGETABLES 705.
Cottolene.
This substitute for lard or suet consists of 6 parts cotton oil, 4 parts oleostearine. Melt together with very gentle heat and run through a filter in jars. This is preferred by many to animal fat, being purer as well as cheaper.
PRESERVING, TESTING, AND PACK.
Rendering pork fat is still done, but this page bundles the sound part of the job with two things that put it out of bounds: an alkaline bleaching step and a description of cutting lard with lime and water. Read it as a document of nineteenth-century fat-handling rather than as working instructions, and use a current rendering recipe if you want leaf lard.
- The lye is the disqualifier"Boiled white lye from hickory ashes" is a homemade potassium hydroxide solution of entirely unknown strength, poured by the pint into fat that will be eaten. Any residue is caustic, and there is no way to measure or neutralise it in a home kitchen. Nothing about the bleaching step is salvageable.
- Milk of lime and waterThe passage on "adulteration" reads as a description of a fraud, but it is written as a working formula. Calcium hydroxide is not a food ingredient at that level, and emulsifying a quarter of the weight as water into lard also gives spoilage organisms something to grow in. The sputtering test that follows is the useful half of the paragraph.
- The sodaAn ounce of soda per 25 pounds of fat is washing soda or saleratus, added to help the fat separate and neutralise free acids. It is a small proportion, but it belongs to the same alkaline approach as the lye and is not part of modern rendering, which relies on low heat and straining alone.
- Intestinal fat in brineIntestinal fat in brine — Soaking gut fat for three or four days in "strong brine changed each day" gives no salt concentration, no temperature and no vessel. Unrefrigerated meat fat held four days at ambient temperature is a spoilage and pathogen risk, and the vagueness is exactly the kind that cannot be corrected by guesswork.
- What "leaf lard" meansThe firm, mild fat around the kidneys and loin, not the belly fat as the text implies. It is still the prized grade for pastry, and it is still worth rendering separately from back fat, which carries more pork flavour.
- Cod fatCod fat — Not fish. "Cod fat" is the soft suet from the beef flank and cod (the loose pocket of fat near the groin). The term is now mostly confined to carcass-grading language rather than the retail counter; ask for flank suet.
- A set kettleA large iron cauldron bricked permanently into a hearth or outbuilding, used for laundry, scalding hogs and rendering. The recipe's outdoor tripod fire is the alternative for households without one, and both are chosen for the same reason: the volume and the smell.
- Storage under cotton battingStorage under cotton batting — A cloth cover excludes dust and slows air contact but does nothing about oxidation or warmth, which is why the text insists on small jars and a cool, dry place. Rendered fat kept at modern room temperature will turn rancid within a few months, sooner in a warm kitchen; the period cellar was considerably colder.
- CottoleneSix parts cottonseed oil to four parts oleostearin is a shortening formula, not lard. The claim that it is "purer" reflects the marketing of the day rather than any analysis, and the beef stearin in it makes the "vegetable" implication misleading.
Rendering lard was a fixed point in the American farm year, tied to hog-killing in the first hard cold of late autumn, when the weather itself did the work of refrigeration and a whole animal could be broken down over a day or two without spoiling. A household that killed its own hogs got a year's cooking fat, soap stock and cracklings out of the operation, which is why a book of household discoveries treats lard alongside pickling and curing rather than as a cooking topic. The alkaline tricks recorded here — soda in the kettle, ash lye for whiteness, lime to hold water — belong to a period when lard was a commodity bought loose from a grocer's tub and its purity was the buyer's problem, hence the sputtering test given for water. Cottolene, the cottonseed-oil and beef-stearin shortening named at the end, was one of the proprietary products that drew households away from home rendering: cheap, shelf-stable, sold in a sealed pail, and heavily advertised to exactly the housewives who had spent their mothers' Novembers standing over a set kettle.