SC - rendering chicken fat
Maggie MacDonald
maggie5 at home.com
Thu Oct 26 08:28:42 PDT 2000
At 10:47 AM 10/26/00 -0400,Nicholas Sasso said something like:
>The method I am using is heating water in quantity (say three gallons) and
>then adding ground tissues to the pot. The tissues render and sink a
>little, leaving the fats floating on top. Skim the fat off, press the
>tissues, and you got lard/tallow. The water serves to regular/diffuse the
>heat and prevent scorching. Cool stuff. Anyone got medieval references
>to how to render? I haven't looked through Menagier or Scully's stuff
>yet, and that is my weekend project.
>
>niccolo difrancesco
While I can't quote the medieval sources, I do have a transcribed oral
history from one of my g-g-grandmothers, who was trained in the European
fashion to be a Housekeeper, and worked for one of the royal families in
Denmark before emigrating to America.
One of the items in her oral history was how she boiled/rendered the fat
for soap three times. She would boil it, cool it, pour off the water, then
scrape the bottom of the solid chunk of fat, then boil it again. After
three times it was proclaimed clean/good enough to make soap from. She
also used fat for winter storage of precooked pieces of sausage, rabbit,
etc. I am wondering if she didn't also use the same fat for that purpose
(as it was pretty darn clean at that point).
Regards,
Maggie MacD.
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