To Prepare Lard
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Obtain the leaf lard from a butcher and skin it clean.
Cut the lard into small pieces and place in a clean iron kettle with a little water.
Render and store
When half cooked, add 1 teaspoon of dry soda to prevent boiling over.
Once done, strain the lard into a tin or stone vessel.
Store in a cool, dry place.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Leaf lard
- Is the fat being rendered, so it forms the whole product.
- Dry soda
- Added mid-cooking to reduce foaming so the rendering fat does not boil over.
The step that matters
Adding the dry soda mid-cooking. Adding soda only when the lard is half cooked helps prevent boiling over. Adding it too early or in too large an amount risks excessive foaming, so measure the single teaspoon carefully.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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