Skip to main content
Main

To Make Lard

Lard is rendered fat made by slowly heating bacon leaf fat and straining the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

To Make Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Render the fat

  1. Cut the leaf fat into small pieces.

  2. Place the pieces in a clean iron kettle.

  3. Heat over a steady, moderate fire until only scraps of meat remain.

  4. Keep the heat gentle to avoid burning the lard.

Strain and store

  1. Spread a coarse cloth in a wire sieve.

  2. Strain the liquid into tin basins that hold 2 to 3 quarts.

  3. Squeeze out all the fat from the scraps.

  4. Once the lard is cold, press a piece of new muslin on top.

  5. Trim the muslin at the edge of the pan.

  6. Store in a cold place or in wooden kegs with tight covers.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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 fat
Supplies the fat that melts down into the lard itself.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle. Fat that gets too hot scorches, turning the lard brown and giving it a burnt flavour. Gentle, steady heat melts the fat out cleanly while the meat scraps stay mostly intact.

“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.

More lard recipes

Rendered 15Preserve 11Compound 6Melted 4Boiled Potatoes in 3Clarified 3 See all 11 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes