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Suetine
Cut the suet into small pieces and cover with water. Let it soak for about a day, changing the water once. Drain it and put in an iron kettle with a half cup of skim milk to every pound of suet. Cook slowly until all sound of boiling ceases; cool slightly and pour off.
This fat has no unpleasant taste or odor and in many recipes may be substituted for all or part of the butter. It is also useful in frying.
This is a rendering method, not a dish: raw beef suet turned into a mild white cooking fat, with a little skim milk added to soften the flavor. The whole thing hinges on hearing when the water is gone.
- The hinge: "all sound of boiling ceases"The sputtering and crackling you hear is water boiling off, and while it continues the fat stays near 212F. When the noise stops the water is gone and the fat has climbed above the boiling point; that is the moment to pull it from the heat. Keep going past silence and the residue browns and the whole batch takes on the beefy taste the recipe is trying to avoid.
- Getting suetAsk a butcher for beef kidney suet rather than trimmings; it is firmer, whiter and renders cleaner. Chop or grind it small, and pull away any blood vessels and pink meat, which are what give tallow its smell. Supermarkets rarely stock it, but a butcher counter usually will on request.
- The soaking dayA day in cold water, changed once, draws out blood and improves the color. Do it in the refrigerator, not on the counter, and drain and pat the pieces dry before they go into the pot.
- Why skim milkHalf a cup of skim milk per pound contributes milk solids that read as buttery rather than beefy, the same trick that flavors butter substitutes of the period. It also means the finished fat is not shelf-stable tallow: keep it refrigerated or frozen, and use it within a few weeks.
- Vessel and heatAny heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven works; an iron kettle was the standard heavy vessel of the period. Use low heat throughout and stir now and then so the milk solids do not settle and scorch.
- Strain it"Pour off" means pour the clear fat away from the cracklings and milk residue. Strain through a double layer of cheesecloth into a clean jar while still liquid, then cool it undisturbed.
- YieldA pound of prepared suet gives roughly 12 to 14 ounces of fat, or something over a cup and a half.
- Using it in place of butterRendered beef fat sets much harder than butter and melts around 105 to 115F, so it will not cream with sugar the way butter does. It behaves best in pastry, biscuits, fried potatoes and pan cooking, where its high smoke point is an advantage, and worst in cakes and anything eaten cold.
"Suetine" reads as a coined trade-style name of the sort that proliferated when butter was expensive or rationed: a homemade answer to the branded butter substitutes and compound cooking fats then filling grocery shelves. Beef suet had long been a staple British and American fat for puddings, mincemeat and pastry, but a plain rendering tastes distinctly of beef, and the small addition of skim milk here looks like a domestic version of the churning-with-milk process used commercially to make oleomargarine palatable. Recipes like this one belong to the broader household economy tradition of rendering every scrap of kitchen fat rather than discarding it.