No. 107

Lard

Saindoux

Lard is the produce of leaf lard melted with fat pork; this operation should be performed rapidly, especially in summer time. Remove the membranes and sanguineous parts from all that is required for making the lard--say about twenty pounds; cut the leaf lard and fat pork into half inch squares and steep them separately for two hours in an abundance of cold water using twelve quarts for each and two ounces of crystal soda also for each; wash both in several waters, keeping them separated; drain and lay first the fat pork in a saucepan with four quarts of water, melt it on a slow fire being careful to stir the bottom frequently; as it melts it becomes white and milky, then transparent, when in this state, strain it through a colander and return it to a clean saucepan adding the leaf lard; set it on a good fire and stir incessantly until the squares become dry and brown, then strain the fat, press well the squares, leave to cool slightly, afterward adding a gill of water for every two pounds of the fat. Beat the whole vigorously, let cool and draw off the clear part before the fat has had time to congeal, just when it begins to set, beat thoroughly to have it smooth.

← No. 106 Sweet Jelly with Gelatine, or Fish Isinglass Elementary Methods No. 108 Axunge →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing bulk rendering for a restaurant larder — twenty pounds at a time, in an era when a kitchen went through lard the way a modern one goes through neutral oil. The method scales down cleanly, and the finishing steps are what separate this from simply melting fat in a pan.

The hinge: two fats, two stagesThe fat pork is rendered first and strained off while still pale, then the leaf lard goes into that clean fat and is taken all the way to brown, dry cracklings.
Leaf lard and fat porkLeaf lard is the soft fat from around the kidneys, prized for pastry because it is nearly odourless and very fine-grained. Fat pork here means hard back fat. Both are butcher-counter items rather than supermarket ones; ask for them unsalted and unsmoked.
Crystal sodaWashing soda, sodium carbonate — used as a degreasing soak to draw out blood and off-flavours, then rinsed away in several changes of water. It is not a modern practice and is not necessary if the fat is fresh and well trimmed; a plain cold-water soak with a little salt does the same job.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. At a gill per two pounds of fat, that is a substantial amount of water beaten in.
Why the water is beaten inWhipping cold water into the warm fat and then drawing off the clear portion is a washing step: it carries away residual solids and soluble impurities that would shorten the keeping life. The second beating, caught just as the fat begins to set, is what gives the finished lard its smooth, opaque, spreadable grain rather than a coarse crystalline one.
Heat"Slow fire" means low and patient — the fat should never smoke. The visual cues Ranhofer gives are reliable: cloudy and milky first as water cooks off, then clear and transparent when the water is gone.
StrainingA colander alone will pass fine particles. Line it with several layers of muslin or a coffee filter; specks of browned protein are the first thing to turn rancid.
Yield and keepingRendered and washed this thoroughly it will hold several months refrigerated and a year frozen; at room temperature, as the original assumes, expect weeks rather than months.
The cracklingsThe pressed squares from the second stage are cracklings, salted and eaten as they are or folded into cornbread. Ranhofer treats them as a by-product; they are worth more than that.

A Little History

Saindoux is the French kitchen's word for rendered pork fat, and its presence in the "Elementary Methods" chapter of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) says a good deal about how a nineteenth-century professional kitchen worked: nothing arrived ready-made. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, wrote the book as a complete working manual, so it opens with the substances a cook had to manufacture before cooking could begin — stocks, jellies, glazes, and fats. The distinction he draws between leaf lard and fat pork was standard and commercially meaningful: leaf lard, from the visceral fat around the kidneys, was the pastry-maker's fat, while harder back fat was for frying and larding. Note also what follows this entry — No. 108, Axunge, another rendered pork fat — a reminder that a kitchen of this period distinguished between grades of lard as carefully as a modern one distinguishes olive oils. Commercial hydrogenated shortening arrived in the following decades, though lard gave way only gradually and remained common in American kitchens well into the mid-century.