54 To Melt Fat for Shortening
The fat of all kinds of meat, excepting mutton and hams, makes good shortening. Roast meat drippings and the liquor that meat is boiled in, should stand until cold to have the fat harden so that it can be taken off easily. Cut your scraps of fat into small pieces, and melt them slowly without burning, together with the fat from your drippings. When melted, strain it and let it remain until nearly cold, then pour in a little cold water. When the fat forms into a hard cake, take it up and scrape off the sediment that adheres to the under side, melt it again and when lukewarm sprinkle in a little salt. The dregs of fat are good for soap grease. This shortening answers all the various purposes of lard very well, excepting in the warmest weather. In using it for pies it is necessary to use considerable butter with it. The fat of meat should not be suffered to lie more than a week in winter without melting, and in summer not more than two or three days. Mutton fat and the fat of beef, if melted into hard cakes, will fetch a good price at the tallow chandler’s. It is much more economical for housekeepers to put down their own pork, than to buy it already salted. The leaves and thin pieces that are not good for salting, should be cut into small bits and melted, then strained through a cullender with a cloth laid in it, as soon as it begins to thicken sprinkle in a tea cup of salt, to twenty or thirty weight of the lard; stir it in well, then set it away in a cool place. Some people have an idea that pork scraps must be fried till very brown in order to be preserved good the year round, but it is not necessary if salt is put in.