The Rise and Fall of Lard in American Cooking
Before olive oil was sexy and butter was branded as artisanal, there was lard.
Pure, pearlescent, and pliable, lard was once the beating heart of American kitchens…scooped from crocks, rendered on stovetops, folded into flaky pies and sizzling cast iron skillets.
It was the secret to Grandma’s biscuits and the reason your great-grandfather’s fried chicken shattered like porcelain under a fork.
It was more than fat…it was the flavor of home, the scent of Sundays, the quiet alchemy of comfort and tradition.
So where did it go?
This is the story of lard.
Its rise, its glory, its betrayal, and its soft, crackling return.
The Glory Days: Lard’s Golden Hour
In early American kitchens (colonial, prairie, and even urban) lard was as essential as flour and salt.
Pigs were not just animals; they were pantries on legs.
Every part was used, but the fat?
That was gold.
Rendered slowly over fire, pork fat transformed into snowy white lard…creamy and shelf-stable.
It thickened gravies, preserved sausage, seasoned cast iron, and bound together biscuits like edible glue.
It gave pie crusts that elusive balance: rich but not greasy, crisp yet tender.
And unlike butter, lard didn’t burn at high temperatures.
That meant better frying.
Better searing.
Better flavor.
In the 19th century, it wasn’t just a home staple, it was a commercial darling.
Lard lit lanterns, lubricated machines, and baked its way into every American cookbook.
Enter Crisco: The Industrial Coup
In 1911, a new kind of fat arrived on the scene: Crisco.
It wasn’t animal. It wasn’t natural. It was chemistry: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, white as snow, shaped to mimic lard but with no pig attached.
It was the industrial revolution in a can, and it was backed by a marketing war machine.
Procter & Gamble, the company behind Crisco, didn’t just promote it, they evangelized it.
They mailed out free cookbooks to housewives across America, each one replacing every recipe that once called for lard with the word Crisco.
They promised purity. Modernity. Cleanliness.
And Americans bit.
By the 1950s, hydrogenated vegetable shortenings were the new kitchen standard. Lard became “old-fashioned.” Archaic.
And soon, unwanted.
Related Read: What Happens When You Stop Eating Seed Oils?
The Smearing of Lard: Fat, Fear, and False Science
Lard didn’t just fade into the background. It was actively villainized.
As heart disease rates climbed in the mid-20th century, scientists and politicians looked for someone to blame. Enter Ancel Keys and the now-infamous Seven Countries Study, which linked saturated fat to heart disease.
Though the study’s methodology was later criticized for cherry-picking data, its impact was seismic.
Suddenly, all animal fats (including lard) were guilty by association.
Doctors warned against it. Nutrition labels condemned it.
School curriculums taught children that lard was the fast track to clogged arteries and early death.
Even though traditional lard is lower in saturated fat than butter and higher in monounsaturated fats (like olive oil), nuance was no match for fear.
Related Read: The Forgotten Food Pyramid: What Happened to Real Nutrition?
Factory Farming Changed the Flavor
There was also a dirty little secret: the lard most people were eating did become less healthy.
Traditional lard came from pasture-raised pigs, especially those rich in leaf lard (from around the kidneys), which is smooth, mild, and prized by bakers.
But with the rise of factory farming, pigs were bred for lean meat, not fat.
Their diets changed.
Their lives shortened.
The result? Lard that was harder, funkier, and more prone to spoilage.
So even the few cooks who wanted to use lard were met with a product that didn’t resemble the glory days.
Cultural Erasure and Class Divide
Let’s not ignore the cultural undercurrents either.
Lard remained popular in many immigrant kitchens…Mexican tamales wrapped in corn husks with lard-laced masa, Chinese dumplings rich with pork fat, Southern Black cuisine humming with history and rendered love.
But these traditions were often dismissed by mainstream food culture, which, for decades, leaned toward French fine dining and suburban white bread recipes.
Lard was rural. Poor. Ethnic.
It became associated with poverty, not pride.
And in a consumerist era where convenience was king, lard had no place.
The Redemption Arc: Fat Fights Back
But oh, how the pendulum swings.
In the 2000s, as Americans grew disillusioned with processed foods, trans fats, and plastic-wrapped convenience, we started looking backward.
Back to butter.
Back to bone broth.
Back to lard.
Food writers, chefs, and health rebels began to whisper its name again.
Nutritionists realized that hydrogenated vegetable oils (like the ones in Crisco) contained trans fats, which were far more damaging to heart health than natural saturated fats. And lard?
Real lard? It didn’t contain trans fats at all…unless it had been industrially hydrogenated.
The same media that once crucified lard started to praise it.
Articles with titles like “Why Lard Deserves a Comeback” and “The Pie Secret You’ve Forgotten” popped up in Bon Appétit and the New York Times.
The narrative was shifting.
Lard’s Modern Moment: Artisan, Local, and Loved
Today, lard is back. But not the kind that comes in a blue bucket.
We’re talking about leaf lard from heritage pigs. Pasture-raised. Slow-rendered.
Hand-scooped into mason jars at your local farmers market or butcher shop.
Chefs are using it again…Michelin-starred and roadside diner alike.
Food bloggers are folding it into hand pies.
Grandmothers are digging out their old recipes, and Gen Z TikTokers are learning to make tamales the way their abuelitas did.
And home cooks who want clean, traditional fat for roasting and frying are rediscovering the magic of lard, not as a relic, but as a rebellion.
Lard and the Feminine Kitchen: Power, Shame, and Shifting Roles
Lard once lived in the hands of women.
In the gentle press of thumb against biscuit dough, in the slow render over low flame, in the hush of Sunday kitchens perfumed with pork and prayer.
To understand lard’s fall is to understand the erasure of the feminine domestic arts…how once-revered skills like preserving, frying, and baking were slowly devalued, outsourced, and then commodified.
Lard was messy. It took time.
It needed intuition.
And when post-war America told women to trade aprons for typewriters and casseroles for convenience, lard was among the first casualties.
It became a relic of unpaid labor.
A greasy ghost of the barefoot homemaker ideal.
And for women who wanted independence, modernity, or simply less mess, tossing the lard jar felt like freedom.
But something was lost.
In that quiet rebellion against domestic expectation, an entire lineage of inherited flavor began to fade.
Now, as more women (and men this time around!) reclaim food sovereignty (through gardens, home baking, and nose-to-tail cooking) lard quietly returns, cradled again in hands that remember.
Sacred Fat: Lard Across Cultures and Ceremonies
To reduce lard to an ingredient is to miss the point.
Across cultures, animal fat has long been sacred…offered to gods, burned in lamps, used in rituals that honored life and death alike. In Mesoamerican cultures, lard blended with maize to create tamales for Día de los Muertos, food for both the living and the spirits.
In Jewish cuisine, schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) holds a place as rich and reverent as any oil.
Lard bridged the divide between feast and necessity. It gave the poor richness and the holy something to burn.
Yet when America began stripping food of its story, lard’s sacred role went first.
Industrialization did more than alter taste, it severed memory. Suddenly, fat was shameful.
Something to hide, not honor.
But the memory lives in families who never stopped making dumplings, never stopped kneading fat into masa, never stopped passing down flavor as inheritance.
The Smell of Lard: A Sensory Time Machine
Lard doesn’t just flavor food, it haunts the air.
There’s something about the smell of it rendering that folds time in on itself.
It’s Sunday in a farmhouse, windows cracked to the cold, radio playing softly in the corner.
It’s your great-aunt’s hands shaking a pan of cracklings, the dog at her feet hoping one might fall.
It’s hush puppies at a fish fry, tortillas puffing up on a comal, pie crusts rising in an oven too old for a timer but too faithful to fail.
Scent is memory’s oldest servant, and lard, like woodsmoke or warm milk, carries us home whether we want it to or not.
That’s the secret power of traditional fats. They don’t just nourish bodies.
They anchor souls.
And in a world of sterile food and flavorless convenience, the smell of lard rendering is nothing short of resurrection.
Vegetarianism, Veganism, and the Lard Conversation
We cannot talk about the return of lard without honoring the ethical debates that swirl around its name.
In an era increasingly defined by plant-based shifts, factory farming resistance, and climate urgency, lard remains controversial.
But not all lard is created equal, and not all meat is mass-produced.
When lard comes from regenerative farms that honor the whole animal, it becomes part of a sustainable circle, not a break in it.
Still, the discomfort lingers. Lard asks us to look at death. At flame. At the cycle of life and loss that flavors our meals. It’s not as easy as saying “plant good, animal bad.”
But that complexity is sacred. It invites questions. It forces intention.
And in that way, lard becomes not just a fat, but a reckoning.
The Forgotten Art of Cracklings: A Lost Treasure
When you render lard properly, a miracle happens: cracklings.
Tiny, golden-brown nuggets of crisped pork skin and fat…somewhere between a crouton and a relic.
Cracklings were once prized. Folded into cornbread, tossed over greens, nibbled by farmers and children alike straight from the pan.
They are the culinary cousin of thrift and joy, a testament to the idea that nothing goes to waste when we honor food fully.
But like lard itself, cracklings have become rare. Too “old-school,” too “unhealthy,” too labor-intensive for fast food culture.
Yet they hold lessons. In texture. In patience.
In reverence.
Cracklings remind us that flavor lives not just in what we keep, but in what we almost forget.
And the first time you bite into one again, there’s this hush. A pause.
A little internal nod that says: Oh. That’s what food used to taste like.
Making Your Own: Rendered Gold
If you want to join the renaissance, the best way to experience lard is to render it yourself. You can often ask a butcher for pork fat trimmings…specifically leaf fat, which is the mildest and most prized for baking.
Rendering lard is simple:
Cut the fat into small cubes.
Heat it slowly over low heat.
Strain through cheesecloth once melted.
Store it in a jar in the fridge and use it as you would any fat: for sautéing vegetables, frying eggs, greasing pans, or brushing over roasting potatoes for that shatter-crisp edge.
It’s not just food. It’s a connection.
Why Lard Matters: Beyond Nostalgia
The return of lard isn’t just about flavor, it’s about philosophy.
It’s a rebellion against food fear. A reclaiming of heritage.
A sustainable choice that says yes to using the whole animal and no to throwing away fat in favor of industrial alternatives.
It’s also more environmentally responsible than palm oil, which contributes to deforestation, or synthetic seed oils, which require heavy processing.
Lard, when sourced well, honors the animal. It honors the land. And it honors the cook.
The Lessons in the Drippings
Lard fell because of fear. Because of marketing.
Because we forgot how to listen to our ancestors and learned to trust shiny labels instead.
But it rises again now (softly and without fanfare) because we remember.
We remember the pies that flaked like dreams, the Sunday chicken that sizzled like symphonies, the cast iron pans passed down like heirlooms.
We remember what it means to make food with intention. With memory.
With fat that tells a story.
So the next time someone wrinkles their nose at the word “lard,” smile.
You know the truth.
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