“Turn it upside down after baking so the lard can soak through.”

August 18, 2020 12:35 AM

(caution for pig fat) Lard, glorious lard! Twelve or sixteen pieces or round or a crown or after proving! Lardy bread (or lardy cake or lardey cake or lardy Johns), otherwise knows as dough cake or fourses cake and with close relatives such as the Cheltenham dripper and Yorkshire fatty cake, is one of the traditional breads and cakes of English counties and seaside towns. The original or first is debatable and lost in the ancient counties. Made with lard or lardo, flour and various fruits, sometimes sticky and with your mum or while being filmed, this is perhaps not the healthiest meal. Obviously best served with a nice cup of tea. Palate cleanser.
posted by Wordshore (36 comments total)

(This post is because an astonishingly generous, kind and funny MeFite has offered to make a "lardy bread" which she described as "a masterpiece of unhealthyness". If I time it right, it may become my birthday cake; if it's as lardtastic as the videos I've just looked at suggest, it may become my last cake. YOLO.)(You Only Lard Once)
posted by Wordshore at 12:40 AM on August 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

Wordshore is on a single handed mission to send all mefiltes to a lardy, chippy, biscuity grave.
posted by RandomInconsistencies at 12:54 AM on August 18, 2020 [9 favorites]

Lard?

Also, due to mutual friends, I used to hang out quite often with a really weird guy named Justin Roiland - who would later go on to great fame with House of Cosbys and Rick and Morty. He grew up in a small city/suburb East of San Francisco and South of Sacramento named Manteca, but pronounced "Man-Teekah" by the white residents.
posted by Anoplura at 1:07 AM on August 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

From The Happy Foodie:

The origins of Lardy Cake are in the countryside, where it was traditionally eaten as a mid-afternoon snack by the workers in the fields. Known as 'fourses', this snack time was the afternoon equivalent of the morning's 'elevenses'. The calorie-heavy sweet dough, accompanied by a cool bottle of ale, was just the thing to keep energy levels up during the long days of harvest.

(no references)
posted by Wordshore at 1:15 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Now all I can think of is Jamie Hyneman sonorously intoning "Lard..." in a Mythbusters episode.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:00 AM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Knew a chef who was fixated on pork belly of all kinds, and putting it in everything. He had a real hardon for lardons.
posted by bartleby at 4:04 AM on August 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

They're happy because.....
posted by lalochezia at 4:38 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

For the veg*ns that have read this far, never fear:

Vegetarian Lardy Cakes

Strictly, these cannot be lardy cakes as they contain no lard. But, astonishingly, white chocolate has a similar effect to lard when it comes to baking. I have used it on a number of occasions and it works a treat. I reckon these are the nearest vegetarian alternative you can get to traditional lardy cakes. If you use dairy-free white chocolate, these buns would be completely vegan too. As the chocolate is already quite sweet, I didn’t add any additional sugar to the bakes.

Eaten warm from the oven, this was perhaps the most delicious thing I’d eaten since … oh, I don’t know … the goat’s cheese and caramalised tomato chilli chutney I’d had at lunchtime. It may not be quite the same product that comes out of our local bakery, but it didn’t look much different and the texture was very similar. However, when CT tried it, he thought it tasted very much like the original and he does claim to be a connoisseur of such things. All things considered, I deem this to be a success and a new bake is born: “Liskeardy Cake”.

...

posted by sebastienbailard at 4:47 AM on August 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

One of the better things in the world: carnitas. Pork chunks and chilies fried in lard, then stewed, then simmered until the stewing liquid evaporates, frying the pork again.

Another of those better things is that you save the lard you strain off of the meat for the next time you make carnitas, and that lard will be a beautiful orange color from all the spice and chili in the first batch. Sure, you could save that lard to make another, even better batch of carnitas, or you could use it to make biscuits. Spicy biscuits! Biscuits that catch you off guard because of the heat. Biscuits whose fire it’s matched near perfectly by the creamy goodness of a proper sausage gravy.

I mean, were you planning to live forever?
posted by Ghidorah at 4:55 AM on August 18, 2020 [16 favorites]

This FPP is AWESOME.
posted by Melismata at 5:18 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

The first time I experienced lard was in the house of my then-boyfriend's mother, a sensible farmwife who, each Christmas, made German fruit snaps as gifts for family and friends, with lard as an ingredient. I was a happy kitchen monkey, delighted that she was letting me help with making them--I mean, boyfriend's mother allowing you to work beside her in her own kitchen is something special, right?--and it was that day I discovered lard, nasty greyish-white, greasy in its plastic commercial tub, but absolutely indispensable for these cookies. Flash forward a number of years, and I am at the butcher shop, discussing which cuts of meat I want from my pigs with the Mennonite behind the counter, and she asks whether I want the lard. Sure! Yes! Of course, I say, thinking of the fruit snaps. I'll do a little baking with it! It arrives days later in three 18"x28" plastic bins, each filled with four-inch-thick slabs of creamy whiteness, and lard re-enters my life. A little bit at a time, I cut it into smallish cubes and melt it down in an electric roasting pan, rendering it into liquid form. It's January, and the closed-up house now smells terrible, but by late afternoon, I have pint jar after pint jar of real, honest-to-God homemade lard in the freezer. In the year that follows it goes into every baked good I make, and I pull it out every time I need to grease my favorite cast iron pan for tacos. My kids have grown up thinking that everyone has a jar of lard in the fridge. Don't let that little plastic tub of commercial fat fool you--snow-white lard, the real thing, is year-round magic.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:45 AM on August 18, 2020 [11 favorites]

Not to be confused with lard bread.
posted by saladin at 6:48 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

It always gives me pleasure to see the different ways that lard and butter are sold in British supermarkets. Butter comes in green, nature-themed packaging with images of cows, trees and daisies. Lard comes in plain packaging with the words PURE LARD. Lard is hardcore!
posted by verstegan at 7:05 AM on August 18, 2020 [6 favorites]

Strictly, these cannot be lardy cakes as they contain no lard. But, astonishingly, white chocolate has a similar effect to lard when it comes to baking.

Woah wait stop everything would this work in pie crust?
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:20 AM on August 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

I used to bake pies for a restaurant. At some point we switched from lard vegetable shortening, and even my vegetarian ass has to admit the texture of the crusts wasn’t quite as good.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:40 AM on August 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

Lard is hardcore!

So... lardcore?
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:41 AM on August 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

On a recipe page for Aberdeen Butteries (which requires 250g of butter and 125g of lard to make 16):

"Butteries are named after their high lard content. They are also known as morning rolls and rowies and are a traditional Aberdeen roll. The best way to describe their look and taste is a saltier, flatter and greasier Croissant. Which doesnae sound nice, but rowies are really delicious and filling for breakfast. Aberdeen butteries can be eaten cold and many shops, garages etc sell them pre buttered for anyone snatching an on the go breakfast."
posted by Wordshore at 8:51 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

three 18"x28" plastic bins

How many pigs?!?
posted by clew at 9:34 AM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Ok now I've got this advertising jingle stuck in my head (co-opted as a throw-away song lead-in by Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra) but I cannot locate the original for the life of me:

When I bake a pie
For the apple of my eye
It's got to have a crust
I can trust

You ask me what my secret is
It's really not that hard
I'll tell you why my pie's so good
It's my [fucking] lard

posted by mazola at 9:47 AM on August 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

This is how Metafilter ends. We all die of clotted cream arteries (an actual disease in Devon) and King Wordshore reigns supreme over the burning embers.

*not an actual prediction
posted by RandomInconsistencies at 9:48 AM on August 18, 2020 [7 favorites]

Mucky fat butties also I remember Doorsteps and Dripping as a kid. Dripping being beef rather than pork fat.
Doorsteps were thick slices of loaf bread; pre that packeted stuff.
posted by adamvasco at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Doorsteps sometimes meant slices of bread that were thicker on one end than the other, thus wedges.

I think the pretty girl in Werther is first seen cutting doorsteps for children from a big loaf held under her arm.
posted by clew at 10:42 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Oreo cookies were SO MUCH BETTER when the creamy filling was made from lard. Today's Oreos, while tasty, pale in comparison. At least in my memory.
posted by Quasimike at 11:20 AM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Doorsteps sometimes meant slices of bread that were thicker on one end than the other, thus wedges.

So why aren't they called "wedgies" to distinguish them from mere butties? I give up.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 12:49 PM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Every now and then, my partner's aunt in Albuquerque sends us a package containing bizcochitos, which must contain lard for correct flavor. I am the kind of jewish person who eats bacon but not pork chops or pork loin (so, an unobservant jew) and I make an exception to my general aversion to lard to enjoy them. Watch out, they crumble!
posted by Lawn Beaver at 1:06 PM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Why do I not know any other food language's word for schmaltz?
Rendered chicken or goose fat, I suppose it's the poultry version of lard.
It's like chicken broth and melted butter had a thick gooey baby.
Consomme-ghee?
posted by bartleby at 1:41 PM on August 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

Shmaltz always makes me think of all those times on Green Acres when Lisa would tell how they smuggled the family jewels out of Hungary “in a jar of chickens fat.”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:13 PM on August 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

So, if you have a nice butcher you can get the rind from pork roasts sold to you and render a lot of lard when making crackling. Make sure your lard is solid and cold before making pie crusts. I find that a combination of frozen bacon grease and white lard (MonkeyToes is so right on that one) makes a great pie crust for apple pie and especially a combination pork apple pie.

I totally cheat and freeze my butter and lard then shred with a food processor before making a crust. You toss the shreds to your flour then ice-cold water or if you are science-driven, vodka before making the mass come together. It provides minimal handling before letting the dough rest.

Also, an outdoor grill with a burner makes your home not smelly when rendering lard or aromatic condiments.
posted by jadepearl at 3:50 PM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

There's a local restaurant / bakery that sold caramels made with lard. Before they switched to becoming a restaurant / bakery they were a butcher shop / bakery. I don't know if they still sell lard caramels after switching to a reduced Covid-times menu.
posted by research monkey at 4:29 PM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not to be confused with lard bread.

We visited friends in Brooklyn and one of them, a vegetarian, insisted we needed to try the lard bread from the bakery she regularly visited. She’d never had it but she guessed we’d like it. We did.

(Not lard, but now when I smoke brisket I render the trimmed fat in the smoker and filter it into jars. We use smoked tallow as a regular cooking fat, and mmmm. It smells so good when it hits a hot cast iron pan.)
posted by fedward at 8:03 PM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

We all die of clotted cream arteries (an actual disease in Devon)

Unheard of in Cornwall, because having the jam below means that the cream can't stick to the arteries.
posted by ambrosen at 3:34 AM on August 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Central Europe chiming in with some simplifications: why put lard in the bread when you can put it on the bread, as a simple spread?

Hungarian version (with paprika and sometimes raw onions)
Polish version (onions and garlic, mostly)
German version (onions and apples)

I can only testify for the hungarian one. This is the real breakfast of the champions!
posted by kmt at 5:59 AM on August 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

I mean no disrespect to central Europeans, but does lard really go with savoury flavours? Surely it's only common sense that it works best with sugar or dried fruit?
posted by ambrosen at 6:09 AM on August 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

I mean no disrespect to central Europeans, but does lard really go with savoury flavours? Surely it's only common sense that it works best with sugar or dried fruit?

Depends on the lard. I've been intrigued enough by this discussion to actually start doing some independent research into "how to render your own lard" (hi, Brooklyn Hipster Foodie here), and depending on the actual fat you use for your lard, you may end up with some kind of a faintly porky note in it - which would work for savoury flavors better so than in sweet.

So if you have rendered leaf lard (the super-pure lard which comes from one kind of fat), that's best for a fruit pie. But if you've got another kind of lard that comes from rendering pork belly, that's best used for a pork pie.

< Hyneman > …. Lard.... < / Hyneman >
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:29 AM on August 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is a timely post as the most recent issue of Ross Clarke's excellent Vittles newsletter talks a bit about the use of lard and regional British baking.

I come from a lard eating culture (French Canadian) so I grew up with it and find it weird when people don't use it or a bit afraid of it as if just entertaining the thought of it will give them a heart attack. We used it a lot. As an example my great grandmother's fève au lard, baked beans, has as an ingredient a pound of lard in it so... I've eaten a lot of it. I know Lard = lard for a lot of people (and some people even label vegetable shortening as lard... it is not) but with us lard from different parts of the pig were for different things and were not entirely interchangeable. I forget all the rules my great grandmother had for pig fat but one that I think is still common with other people is that she only used leaf lard, the fat around the kidneys, for pastry. It was never used for anything else. Lard that had a "pleasing taste" was reserved for baked beans. Lard that had a mild or almost neutral taste was for general cooking or baking that wasn't pastry and for making soap. Rendered bacon fat, from side or back bacon, would always be used like butter and for certain dishes (usually potato or cabbage based). We also had mixed fat, so fat of a variety of animals but not fish, that was clarified and used for general cooking but never baking. It'd be derived from whatever excess fat was cut off pieces of meat before cooking and then rendered & stored in a special container on the counter. Lot of our use of lard comes from economy as you had to make what you had last a long time with minimal waste. Not exactly healthful food but it powered you when you worked long hours doing manual labour.

In short, lard is good don't be afraid of it and use it frequently. Unless you're a vegetarian or maintain pork prohibitions or have pork allergies. But don't use vegetable shortening as that stuff for sure will kill you.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

Once on Emeril Live, Mr. Lagasse started to melt a large chunk of butter in a skillet. "Butter ruuuules," he said. Then a moment later, "Lard also rules, but today we're using butter."
posted by neuron at 8:27 PM on August 19, 2020 [2 favorites]