No. 55

Fat Prepared for Frying

Graisse Preparee Pour la Friture

The preference is generally given to beef kidney suet; cut it in half inch pieces and place these in an untinned iron pan with one gill of water for every pound of fat; cook on a slow fire stirring carefully from time to time so that it cannot adhere to the bottom. When very clear and it ceases to froth it is a sign that it is done, then strain through a sieve or cloth.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is rendering, not cooking: the water is there to keep the fat from scorching before it melts, and it boils away as the job finishes. The frothing is that water leaving.

A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a cup of water per pound of suet — enough to cover the bottom of the pan and buy you time before anything can catch.
Untinned ironPlain cast iron or carbon steel. Nineteenth-century copper and iron pans were often lined with tin, which softens near 450F, and Ranhofer is warning you off it. A modern heavy stainless or enameled pot is fine.
Beef kidney suetThe hard crumbly fat from around the kidneys, distinct from softer trim fat. Ask a butcher; it is rarely on display but usually available, and it renders whiter and firmer than back fat.
Slow fireLow heat, a bare simmer — the surface should tremble, not bubble hard. Rushing it browns the solids and the finished tallow tastes of scorch.
Reading donenessTwo signals together: the liquid goes from milky to clear, and the frothing stops because the water is gone. From that point the fat can brown quickly, so strain promptly.
Timing and yieldThe recipe gives neither. Rendering a few pounds cut small generally takes an hour or two, and a pound of suet will usually give somewhere around three-quarters of its weight in rendered fat, plus the browned solids left in the sieve, which are worth salting and eating.
StrainingA sieve lined with two layers of muslin or cheesecloth. Any meat particle left behind will go rancid first and shortens the keeping life considerably.
Storage and useCools to a hard white block. Refrigerated in a covered jar it keeps for months, frozen far longer. Its smoke point is around 400F, comfortable for the deep frying this book calls for constantly.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the Elementary Methods section is the professional groundwork the rest of the book assumes you have done. In a kitchen frying at that scale, rendered beef suet was a standard medium: cheap, stable, high-smoking, and reusable if strained after each service. Vegetable shortenings and refined seed oils displaced it only later. The wet-rendering method here — starting fat with a little water — is the old and forgiving one, still used by anyone making tallow or leaf lard today for the same reason Ranhofer gives: the pan cannot exceed the boiling point of water until the water is gone.