Home › Recipes › Compressed Lard

Compressed Lard

The most wonderfully light and tall puff-paste, that beat butter pastry all hollow, used to be made in the times when lard oil was used in immense quantities before kerosene came in, of the stearine lard, the residue left after pressing out the oil. This was as hard as tallow, but of a different texture. Oil is the greatest enemy to puff-paste, and stearine contains none. Then we had vol-au vents that a small goose could be hid in, that rose several inches high of their own lightness.

It looks like the sweet fresh suet that comes in so plentifully with the fat loins of beef ought to be better for pastry than strong butter and miserable oily lard, and so it is, and comes next to the stearine lard mentioned above, but can only be used after going through a particular process. People try to use melted suet or tallow or drippings, and they mince raw suet and then pound it fine, but however good short paste these may make they will not produce puff-paste. The suet or tallow is always composed of hard grains that cut through and destroy the flakes. The proper process is something of a trade secret; a good thing for those who work for themselves to save butter by.