The term fat is used to designate all products of fatty composition and includes liquid fats such as oils, soft fats such as butter, and hard fats such as tallow. While all fats have practically the same energy-value, they differ widely from each other in their melting point, and the difference in digestibility seems to correspond to the difference in melting point. Butter burns at 240 degrees Fahrenheit, while vegetable oils can be heated as high as 600 degrees Fahrenheit, furnishing a very high temperature for cooking purposes before they begin to burn. The scorching of fat not only wastes the product, but renders it indigestible, even dangerous to some people, and for this reason butter should never be used for frying, as frying temperature is usually higher than 240 degrees. It is well to choose for cooking only those fats which have the highest heat-resisting qualities because they do not burn so easily.
Beginning with the lowest burning point, fats include genuine butter, substitute butters, lard and its substitutes, and end with tallow and vegetable oils. Of the latter, there is a varied selection from the expensive olive oil to the cheaper cottonseed, peanut, cocoanut and corn oils and their compounds and the hydrogenated oils.
The economy of fat, therefore, depends on the choice of the fat used for the various cooking processes as well as the conservation of all fatty residue, such as crackling, leftover frying fats and soup fat. For cooking processes, such as sauteing (pan frying), or deep fat frying, it is best to use the vegetable and nut oils. These are more plentiful, and hence cheaper than the animal fats; the latter, however, can be produced in the home from the fats of meats and leftover pan fats, which should not be overlooked as frying mediums. Butter and butter substitutes are best kept for table use and for flavoring. The hydrogenated oils, home-rendered fats, lard and beef and mutton suet can be used for shortening fats.
In the purchase of meats, the careful housewife should see that the butcher gives her all the fat she pays for, as all fats can be rendered very easily at home and can be used for cooking purposes. Butchers usually leave as large a proportion of fat as possible on all cuts of meat which, when paid for at meat prices, are quite an expensive item. All good clear fat should, therefore, be carefully trimmed from meats before cooking. Few people either like or find digestible greasy, fat meats, and the fat paid for at meat prices, which could have been rendered and used for cooking, is wasted when sent to table.
There are various methods of conserving fat. First, the economical use of table fats; second, the saving of cooking; and third, the proper use of all types of fat.
Economy in the use of table fats may best be secured by careful serving. One serving of butter is a little thing—there are about sixty-four of them in a pound. In many households the butter left on the plates probably would equal a serving or one-fourth of an ounce, daily, which is usually scraped into the garbage pail or washed off in the dishpan. But if everyone of our 20,000,000 households should waste one-fourth of an ounce of butter daily, it would mean 312,500 pounds a day, or 114,062,500 pounds a year. To make this butter would take 265,261,560 gallons of milk, or the product of over a half-million cows, an item in national economy which should not be overlooked.
When butter is used to flavor cooked vegetables, it is more economical to add it just before they are served rather than while they are cooking. The flavor thus imparted is more pronounced, and, moreover, if the butter is added before cooking, much of it will be lost in the water unless the latter is served with the vegetables. Butter substitutes, such as oleomargarine and nut margarine, should be more largely used for the table, especially for adults. Conserve butter for children, as animal fats contain vitamines necessary for growing tissues. Butter substitutes are as digestible and as nourishing as butter, and have a higher melting point. They keep better and cost less.
Oleomargarine, which has been in existence for fifty years, was first offered to the world in 1870 by a famous French chemist, Mege-Mouries, who was in search of a butter substitute cheap enough to supply the masses with the much-needed food element. He had noticed that the children of the poor families were afflicted with rickets and other diseases which could be remedied by the administration of the right amount of fat. He combined fresh suet and milk and called the product "oleomargarine." In the United States this product is now made of oleo oil or soft beef fat, neutral lard, cottonseed and other oils, churned with a small quantity of milk, and in the finer grades, cream is sometimes used. A certain proportion of butter is usually added, and the whole worked up with salt as in ordinary butter-making.
Owing to the fears of the butter-makers that oleomargarine would supplant their product in popular favor, legislation was enacted that restricted the manufacture of oleo and established a rigid system of governmental inspection, so that the product is now manufactured under the most sanitary conditions which furnishes a cleaner and more reliable product than natural butter.