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To Clarify Butter for Potting or Frying, and Suet and Dripping for Frying

This recipe clarifies butter and suet by melting and skimming to produce pure fat for cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Clarify Butter for Potting or Frying, and Suet and Dripping for Frying

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify butter

  1. Cut the butter into slices and place it in a jar.

  2. Set the jar in a pan of boiling water until the butter melts.

  3. Skim off the foam, then pour the melted butter gently, leaving the sediment behind.

Render suet and lard

  1. Chop the suet and lard, removing skin and fibrous parts.

  2. Melt the suet and lard slowly over low heat or in a Dutch oven, collecting the fat as it drips.

  3. Alternatively, boil the suet in water, then remove the solidified fat once cooled.

  4. Strain the fat to remove any sediment.

Store and purify

  1. For long-term storage, season dripping for soup but not otherwise.

  2. To purify, clarify the fat twice or add charcoal to remove rancidity.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Its fat is the main product; removing milk solids and water leaves clear, stable fat.
Suet
Provides firm, rendered beef or mutton fat that sets solid as it cools.
Lard
Adds rendered pork fat that contributes a soft texture and rich flavour to the fat.

The step that matters

Pouring off the clarified butter. Butter is mostly fat, water and milk solids. Pouring gently keeps the sediment and water-containing milk solids in the jar, so the fat stays clear and does not spoil quickly.

“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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