Lard and Shortening

Lard came to America with the first colonists. When the first Europeans set up their stockades in North America they filled them with pigs and cows, the four-legged factories that would produce virtually all the cooking fat used in this country up until the industrial revolution.

Pork fat was by far the most common shortening throughout the Colonial era and well into the antebellum period of the young republic. It was used for frying, for breads, biscuits and cakes and even as a dressing for vegetables. Before the advent of refrigeration, most of the nation’s pork was salted and the fattier parts were used for flavoring stuffings as well as stews. Bacon, and the drippings that it would yield, were a prized ingredient. In this agrarian society, lard was rendered at home and kept in the cool confines of the aptly named larder successfully for many months. The crisp crust that lard produces in frying was particularly appreciated in the South where, it has been suggested, black cooks adapted west African frying techniques to create regional specialties like fried chicken and hush puppies. Certainly lard was much more available below the Mason-Dixon Line than in New England where dairy and beef cattle were the more common form of livestock.