Fats For Frying - Vintage Cooking Process

Mazola Corn Oil Vintage Ad

Mazola Corn Oil Vintage Ad © 1920

Beef and mutton suet cut up very small, clarified and strained is used in many kitchens for frying purposes, though lard and oil will answer equally well, but in some cases these are not found quite so suitable. 

The light-colored dripping obtained from roasting meat, and the clean fat taken off stocks, if clarified with the suet, are in a way preferable to anything else for ordinary frying. 

Frying in lard is best adapted for the more bulky articles.  Oil is largely used for frying but requires more careful handling than either of the above fats and needs to be warmed up over a gentle fire to prevent it from rising or boiling over. 

Oil can, without burning, be made hotter than any fat.  Butter is sometimes used for deep frying, but it is hardly suitable, because it gets hot too quickly and is apt to burn before the article to be fried is done.

The principal causes of failure in Frying are:

  1. Putting in things to fry before the fat is thoroughly heated.
  2. Insufficient quantity of fat in the pan.
  3. Too much moisture adhering to the surface of articles to be fried.

Table Talk: The American Authority upon Culinary Topics and Fashions of the Table, Vol. XXVII, 1912, A Series of Articles Published Throughout the Year. Published Monthly by The Arthur H. Crist Co., Cooperstown, NY. A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Interests of American Housewives, Having special reference to the Improvement of the Table.  Marion Harris Neil, Editor.

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