Going back to lard for old-time pies
Cooking fat is one of the first topics pastry chef Delphin Gomes covers with new students at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. At the mention of lard, says Gomes, the students all say the same thing: ``Ugh ."
Lard, made from pig kidney fat, is a pre-industrial age pie crust ingredient that old-fashioned cooks swear by. They say it makes the most tender and flaky crusts. Modern cooks, however, see things differently. After all, how could fat from a pig outperform a modern product like solid vegetable shortening -- especially in a sweet berry pie?
Now that summer pie season has arrived, it's time to get that rolling pin out and start thinking about sublime crusts and fillings. Strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry, sour cherry, and peach -- the fruit choices are many. Now, so are the fat choices.
For nearly a century, the standard fat in American pie pastry was hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Crisco is one popular brand. Now, scientists say that the trans fats in these shortenings are unhealthy. According to Tufts University nutrition scientist Nirupa Matthan, who recently completed an investigation that led to new trans fat labeling requirements, the message is simple: ``Stay away from trans fats."
Former pastry chef Kara Nielsen agrees. The recent graduate of Boston University's masters in gastronomy program says, ``Because of the trans fat issue, people are reconsidering pie crust fat." Nielsen has explored alternatives. While leading a pie-baking seminar at BU, she compared butter with Crisco. She also used lard to ``re - create the crust of early American days." She found that butter makes the crust harder, while Crisco and lard both keep the crust moist while maintaining a ``good crumb."
In terms of taste, ``lard brings a different element," says Nielsen. ``Crisco is really tasteless. Lard has a richer quality."
Healthwise, though, the lard she used -- Manteca brand, comparable to Snowcap (both found in the baking aisle of most supermarkets) -- has been hydrogenated with trans fat to extend the shelf life. Therefore, it hardly resembles the pure lard used by early American bakers.
Crisco has recently introduced a zero trans fat shortening ( in a green can ) , made from sunflower and soybean oil and fully hydrogenated cottonseed oil. In this area, the product is available at Hannaford supermarket in Marlboro.
The other pure fat comes fresh from the farm. Lard from small farms is not hydrogenated, and therefore contains just a small percentage of trans fats that naturally occur in animal products. Nutritionist Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health says lard is nutritionally comparable to butter. It tends to be softer than butter, and, according to the United States Department of Agriculture Nutrient Database, lower in saturated fat and higher in monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Gomes, the pastry chef, remembers that everyone in his childhood home in Burgundy, France, used lard in crusts. Since then, he says, ``it has disappeared. "
But it is starting to reappear.
Because of demand from her customers, Julie Rawson renders lard on Many Hands Organic Farm, a community-supported agriculture farm in Barre. Rawson raises eight to 10 hogs each summer for pork and started selling lard a few years ago. Two years in a row, she has sold out her annual supply of nearly 100 quarts. Rawson grew up on an Iowa pig farm in the 1950s, but by then, she says, her family had ``already lost the tradition and knowledge with the invention of products like Crisco."
Lard started to vanish from market shelves in 1911, when Procter & Gamble released Crisco. By the mid-1930s, vegetable shortening dominated the cooking fat market and almost every new product claimed to be all-vegetable. Now that a new generation of trans- fat- free all-vegetable cooking products is hitting the market, why bother with lard at all?
Because it is the only way to re - create the taste of traditional American summer pies. ``Fat substitutes have done a good job mimicking the texture of fat," says Tim Gilbertson, who studies the molecular biology of taste at Utah State University, ``but just texture and not taste."
French-born pastry whiz Gomes knows the difference. Lard, he says ``is much better in terms of flakiness. It makes the dough nice and puffy. It's just beautiful."
Lard is available at Dietrich's Meats in Krumsville, Pa. (www.dietrichsmeats.com) for $2.50 per pound. In the fall, it will be available from Many Hands Organic Farm in Barre for $10 per quart (www.mhof.net). You can buy frozen leaf fat for $3 a pound to render yourself from Flying Pigs Farm in Shushan, N.Y. (www.flyingpigsfarm.com). 