Another Way
Put the dripping into a clean saucepan, and let it boil for a few minutes over a slow fire, and be careful to skim it well. Let it stand to cool a little, then strain through a piece of muslin into jars for use. Beef dripping is preferable to any other for cooking purposes, as, with mutton dripping, there is liable to be a tallowy taste and smell.
This is a clarifying method rather than a dish: it takes the fat poured off a roast and turns it into a clean cooking fat that will keep. The whole point is driving off the water and separating the meat sediment.
- Dripping, definedDripping is the fat and juices that collect under roasting meat, chiefly beef. What comes out of the pan is fat plus water plus browned meat particles; only the pure fat keeps well.
- "Boil for a few minutes" means boil off the waterThe bubbling you see at first is the water content, not the fat. Keep it over a low heat until the spitting stops and the surface goes quiet and clear, which is the sign the moisture has gone.
- Skimming and strainingSkim the froth as it rises, then strain through muslin or a coffee filter set in a sieve. Any meat sediment left behind is what makes stored dripping turn rancid or sour.
- Cool a little, but not too muchStrain while the fat is still fluid and hand-hot. Fully cooled beef dripping sets hard and will not pass through cloth.
- JarsUse clean, dry, warmed jars so the hot fat does not crack them, and leave them uncovered until set and cold. Sealing warm fat traps condensation, which is exactly what you have just spent the time removing.
- Keeping itA Victorian larder was cold; a modern kitchen is not. Refrigerated, well-clarified beef dripping keeps for several months, and it keeps far longer frozen. Discard it if it smells sharp, cheesy or crayon-like.
- On the mutton remarkThe objection holds. Mutton and lamb fat is high in branched-chain fatty acids that give the tallowy note described here, and it also sets harder. Beef dripping has a relatively high smoke point — figures around 400F are usually quoted — and it was among the standard frying fats in Britain well into the twentieth century.
Clarifying dripping was routine household economy rather than cookery, and it appears among the other kitchen fundamentals because nearly every English kitchen of the period produced it whether it wanted to or not: a joint roasted before the fire or in the oven gave up a great deal of fat, and throwing it away was unthinkable. The clarified result went to frying, to pastry for savoury pies, to greasing tins, and — the brown jelly from the bottom of the basin — to feeding the household between meals. The preference for beef over mutton reflects the ordinary butchery of the day, when both were common roasts. Dripping fell out of domestic use in Britain after the mid-twentieth century as vegetable shortenings and oils became cheap, though it survived in fish and chip frying and has been revived by cooks after roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings made the old way.