FROM NPR (2012):
Ron Silver, the owner of Bubby’s restaurant in Brooklyn, recently put a word on his menu you don’t often see anymore: lard. The white, creamy, processed fat from a pig. And he didn’t use the word just once.
For a one-night-only “Lard Exoneration Dinner”, Silver served up lard fried potatoes. And root vegetables, baked in lard. Fried chicken, fried in lard. Roasted fennel glazed with lard sugar and sea salt. Pies, with lard inside and out. All from lard he made himself in the kitchen.
“It seems funny,” Silver says, “but for thousands of years this was the thing that people cooked with.
A century ago, lard was in every American pantry and fryer. These days, lard is an insult.
“The word lard has become this generally derogatory term associated with fat and disgustingness,” says Dan Pashman who hosts a food podcast called The Sporkful. “Think about Lard-ass, the character from the movie Stand By Me. I mean, he didn’t want to be called Lard-ass.”
How did this delicious, all-natural fat from a pig become an insult? Who killed lard?
Lard didn’t just fall out of favor. It was pushed. It was a casualty of a battle between giant business and corporate interests.
Read more.
See also How Crisco Toppled Lard
