Lard, to Melt
Melt the inner fat of the pig, by putting it in a stone jar and placing this in a saucepan of boiling water, previously stripping off the skin. Let it simmer gently over a bright fire, and as it melts, pour it carefully from the sediment.
Put it into small jars or bladders for use and keep it in a cool place. The flead or inside fat of the pig, before it is melted, ticularly wholesome. It may be preserved makes exceedingly light crust and is parcrust and is para length of time by salting it well and occasionally changing the brine. When wanted for use, wash and wipe it and it will answer for making into paste as well as fresh lard.
AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
A wet-jar rendering method: the fat never touches direct heat, which is exactly why the result stays white and neutral rather than tasting of cracklings. Worth following closely if you want lard for pastry.
- The hinge: gentle heat onlyThe stone jar sitting in boiling water is a bain-marie, and it caps the fat at around 212F so it can never scorch. Rendered dry in a pan the same fat browns and takes on a roast-pork flavour, which is fine for frying and wrong for a pie crust. A heatproof bowl or wide-mouth jar in a pan of simmering water does the same job; a slow cooker on low is the lazy equivalent.
- Flead, leaf lard, inner fatAll three names here mean the same thing: the soft crumbly fat sheathing the kidneys and loin, not the hard back fat. It renders to the mildest, most neutral lard and is the grade pastry cooks want. Ask a butcher for leaf lard or leaf fat; it is usually sold frozen if at all.
- Strip the skin and any membraneThe instruction to remove skin matters more than it sounds. Membrane and skin will not render readily, they scorch against the vessel and cloud the fat with sediment. Cutting the fat up first will speed the rendering.
- Pouring off from the sediment"Pour it carefully from the sediment" means decant the clear liquid fat as it forms rather than boiling the whole mass to the end. In practice, strain through muslin or a fine sieve into your storage jars; anything solid left behind will make the lard turn rancid faster.
- BladdersPig bladders were one of the containers used for storing fat before cheap glass; the recipe offers them as an alternative to small jars. Use clean glass jars with lids, filled while the lard is still liquid and covered once cool.
- "A cool place" now means the fridgeWell-strained leaf lard keeps a few months refrigerated and much longer frozen. In an unrefrigerated larder it will turn rancid a good deal sooner, which is why the recipe specifies a cool place.
- The salting noteThe passage about preserving raw flead in brine, washing it and rendering later, gives no salt strength and no temperature. Do not treat it as a working method for keeping raw fat; freeze the trimmed fat instead until you have enough to render.
- Garbled textThe line running "ticularly wholesome... makes exceedingly light crust and is parcrust and is para length of time" is a typesetting scramble. It should read that flead makes exceedingly light crust and is particularly wholesome, and may be preserved a length of time by salting.
- Yield and costRendering loses weight to sediment and moisture, so expect somewhat less usable lard than the raw fat weighed. The 10d. per pound is the average cost figure the book attaches to the entry.
Rendering was a routine domestic task through much of the period this book covers: a household that bought pork in quantity, or kept a pig, ended up with fat that had to be turned into something storable. Lard did work that butter, oil and shortening are now split between, and the distinction between the soft leaf or flead fat and the firmer back fat was more widely understood than it is now. The insistence on the water bath reflects the pastry cook's priority, a fat with no flavour of its own; the same fat rendered hard was acceptable for frying and for the fat-and-flour crust of a raised pie. The salting note reflects the practice of keeping raw fat down in brine and rendering as needed, and the price given at the end, ten pence a pound, is one of the running features of the book.